Back to normal

Sadly this glorious sight isn't being repeated in 2024. I had a strong suspicion it would be the case, but I am nevertheless disappointed that the more than bumper apricot crop of 2023 is not the new normal.

I have stood beneath the eight trees today and spied maybe 20 fruit in total. It's a proper dearth, although to be fair, it is a dozen more than in 2022, so I am grateful for small mercies...

I am pretty sure that frost did for them this spring. And for a couple of the plum trees too. Unusually we had five consecutive nights of proper frost (-3s and -4s) just after the blossom went over, when I assume the flowers had been pollinated and were on the cusp of becoming tiny fruit. 

Those frosts also hit the just-emerging leaves, so the trees are looking rather patchy in the foliage department too. Not a good stone fruit year, although the peaches are bucking the trend and look okay.

Apple and pear trees are covered in tiny fruit, and the currants and berries are bearing well. So where I may not have heaps of apricots and plums, I should make up for it elsewhere. 

This of course explains why I grow so many different types of fruit (and veggies come to that): if one crop is poor, another is likely to more than make up for it.

It also explains why I preserve so much food. I may not have many fresh apricots to savour this coming autumn, but I still have heaps that I dried, bottled and made into jam, and there is even a crumble in the freezer.

Happily the only crop which took a real battering from the humungous hailstorm yesterday seems to have been the rhubarb. The leaves are shredded and I will need to do some tidying when I'm in the garden tomorrow. Everywhere else there are signs of only minimal damage.

I spent an hour in the company of an elderly retired farmer this afternoon whose political views are somewhere just to the right of Atilla the Hun. I bit my tongue repeatedly as he asserted that climate change is nothing to do with humans, as he laughed merrily about the ancient orange person's "antics" and he defended the right of farmers to do what they see fit on "their land".

I know for a fact that if he was 50 years younger I wouldn't waste my time in his company. What is it about older people that persuades me I'm being nasty if I openly disagree with their views? Why am I more tolerant, to their faces at least? Does it make me a terrible hypocrite? I've been puzzling about it ever since...