A sunny day today, though the early morning was chilly. With the longer nights, the days take longer to warm up. The equinox is next week (22 September) and from then on, till the end of December, the nights are longer than the days. The temperature was down to 6 degrees yesterday at 7 am. In a month or so, we’ll get our first frosts.
Our container has a side door, on the stage. During the week, the door area was cut out of the wall, side jambs fitted, a top bar added, and then the door put in with a lock. It feels strange entering this way, it’s like a new space, like a shed rather than our long container. However we use it now, it is in fact part of our plan to have a kitchen area on the stage with easy access to items in the container. We hope to be able to use the energy from solar panels on the container, that will be attached fairly soon, to heat food and water.
I look for tadpoles in the pond but don’t see any today. Some are there, I am assured, some with legs too on the slow train to frogdom. If they survive the winter, they’ll be froglets in the spring and leave the pond, about the same time that the fully matured are returning, after two to three years away, to breed and lay spawn.
There are few flowers in the garden. Marigolds of course, a few hollyhocks, Japanese anemones and michaelmas daisies. For those of us who don’t attend church, the term michaelmas doesn’t mean much. We may know of the michaelmas session in court and michaelmas term at Oxbridge. That’s the end of my knowledge beyond knowing of St Michael and Marks and Spencers. So I turn to to Wikipedia.
The Christian feast of Michaelmas falls on 29 September. It is also known as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. In angelology, St Michael, in some traditions, is regarded as the greatest of the angels, and is honoured for defeating the devil in the war in Heaven. In one tale, when Lucifer was thrown out of Heaven, he had a painful landing in a blackberry bush. He cursed the bush which is why you should not eat blackberries after Michaelmas Day. Not that they are worth eating so late in the year, being dry, shrunken and pretty tasteless.
We have had quite a bit of rain this week, including a couple of furious, rainbursts. They lasted less than ten minutes, but the rain belted down in stair rods, to replenish our almost empty metre cubes (IBCs). Except one. We have three, they hold about a 1000 litres each. Two were filled by the rain to about a third, but one not at all. The pipe from the pergola gutter wasn’t quite reaching the orifice of the IBC. It must have become dislodged, and the water would have gushed out and onto the ground. We have added a piece of pipe to make sure the water goes where it should.
We have a standpipe and have used our hose over the summer from time to time. We were shocked to get a water bill of over £400, and cannot understand how it is calculated, as we don’t need sewage run off as we don’t have sinks, baths or toilets. We simply water our plants every so often. We are querying the bill.
Our tiny grapes are at last sweet, well as sweet as they are going to get. The buddleia by them has been cut back and is almost leafless. I am sure it is cursing us and will come back with a vengeance next year.