Now I need to crack on with the garden

 It was important that I found time to inspect the hives yesterday, as they really should be looked at every seven or eight days from late March through to September. Fortunately the colonies had showed no sign of swarming nor starvation, and no other problems had arisen whilst I was away.

With the bees taken care of, I had nothing that I must do today, and I found time to take stock of the garden.

In my regular calls to 30%, she had indicated that the weather had been very hot, with not a drop of rain.  I could see that she had not been exaggerating. I was shocked to see parched areas and virtually no sign of growth on the lawns ... there was no way they would need mowing until after this dry spell breaks.

I decide to settle back in to garden mode gently and spent some time this morning removing the side shoots from the tomatoes and tying the vines up to their supports. I also took a quick look at my carrot seedlings and added "thin carrots" to my virtual to-do list.*

That was pretty much all I achieved today, other than a monumental kip in the afternoon ... the bike tour was obviously more tiring than I thought!

There was one other episode from today that I felt was worth mentioning. 

A few weeks ago 30% commented that she had found some droppings up in the orchard that were significantly larger than one would expect from the occasional Muntjac visitor.  We have a trail camera, and, a couple of weeks ago, I set this up overlooking one of the larger gaps in the hedgerow to the adjacent fields.

This morning I removed the camera and sifted through the video clips. I can report that we can add Fallow Deer to the list of orchard visitors, as we had a couple of clips clearly showing this large deer with their unmistakeable dappled coat. There were also rabbits, muntjac and several appearances by a fox.**

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* That list also has "investigate parsnips" to see if I can find anything worth saving amongst the weeds!

** The little sod is even coming in daylight, which means 30%'s plan to release the chickens will have to be put on hold.