It's finally growing again

Saturday wasn't entirely taken up with showing veg. I did find twenty minutes to put feeders on Hives #1 and #3. I poured a couple of litres of syrup in to them, and closed up the hives.* 

So that was yesterday, now on to today.

This morning I did something that I haven't done for months** ... The recent showers have had an amazing effect on the lawns and the brown, parched turf has greened up incredibly quickly.  They haven't completely recovered. There are still brown patches, and the new growth is quite thin, but they look a lot better than they have since late Spring.

I decided it was time to drag out the lawn mower and tidy them up a little.  I am hoping that a light trim will encourage the grass to shoot from the base, and thicken out the sward.

I didn't get very far with my mowing, but I did manage to tidy up the grass paths around the tomato greenhouse and veg patch. I also finally pruned the cooking apple tree that sits by the gateway to the orchard.  

I have had to duck under  a couple of branches every time I head up to check on the bees or chickens, and now we are getting rain I get a regular drenching from the foliage too.  It's a little thing, but my walk to the orchard is now much easier.

Late in the mooring I got a call from the Opticians. They advised that my varifocals were ready for collection, so I abandoned the mower and headed in to Alcester to pick them up.

So that was my morning. Amongst all of that, I also managed to make up another four litres of sugar syrup, which will be fed to the bees, once it has cooled sufficiently.

TP arrived just before lunch for a flying visit. He had spent Saturday in Nottingham with his mother, celebrating her birthday, and had decided to call in for lunch and a catch up. We had a lovely couple of hours exchanging news and we even managed a walk down the lane with the dogs.  

He headed home midway through the afternoon and we returned to our Sunday pottering. 

I checked the two hives and both colonies had each taken two litres of syrup down in to the hives. I added another couple of litres to each feeder and made a mental note to buy more sugar.

As the afternoon turned to evening, our thoughts turned to supper. 30% really fancied tomato soup, so I was persuaded to don my virtual apron and knock up a batch of soup.

So that was Sunday, I see a lot more mowing over the next few days!

---

* It's not good practice to disturb the colonies too often, so this activity was done swiftly, with minimal impact on the bees.

** I checked, and the last time I mowed the lawns was on the 10th June. That was the back lawn. I hadn't mowed out the front since the 25th May.