Those of you moaning English minnies who wrote off Wales as a country after a single wet family holiday in Tenby when you were seven, now is the time to get yourself over here and repent of your childish snap judgment. For the last week the sun has been almost permanently shining (except at night time, naturally, when it gives the other side of the world a go). Temperatures have soared up to the low twenties in the shade (I've been keeping a careful tally) and nature is loving it, with foliage bursting forth, elderflowers and bluebells and red campion and buttercups splashing colour all over the place, and birds everywhere swooping and singing. I heard a cuckoo yesterday, and saw a heron flap lazily up from the river. Bees, butterflies and other flying beings flitter around the place. The forecast is for even more hot sun.
I took a walk out up into the hills the other side of the Dovey river last Sunday morning, intrigued by the purplish hue that now covers a swathe across the lower half of a wide slope. After hauling myself up to it past startled sheep I confirmed my suspicion - the fields were just thick with bluebells. Combined with the clear view up and down the lush Dovey valley, well, you had to be there. The photo above doesn't really do it justice.
Apart from occasional phone calls and brief exchanges with shopkeepers, it has been a very quiet week. I've been left entirely to my own devices, which has principally meant turning my attention to converting a gently sloping southwesterly-facing patch of ground, 20m by 6m, from a thicket of brambles and bracken into a clear area for the eventual planting of willow. Certain varieties of willow grow very fast so in just three years you can expect to get a decent amount of firewood from them; this is known as short-rotation coppice (SRC). This patch isn't very big for that, but it's a start and anyway I have a lot of of semi-mature Scots Pine and Norway Spruce, plus thinnings of mature Sitka Spruce on the slopes, that should be suitable for firewood in the meantime, once felled and seasoned.
So with gloves donned and garden fork in hand I have for the last few days been manfully tackling the scrub, first pulling out the millions of bracken shoots one by one, then ripping out all the brambles (as I've been wearing T-shirts my forearms look like I've been repeatedly trying and failing to end my life), then clearing all the dead bracken and leaf litter left behind, and finally on Wednesday getting down to digging up the complex network of bracken roots that infest the entire area along with the occasional bramble or couchgrass root system for light relief. It's slow going but doable. Sticking to organic principles means chemical weedkillers are out. Pigs are known to eat and trample bracken but it would take years before the roots gave up, and anyway pigs take some looking after, although they do taste good.
Sweating under the scorching Welsh sun (not often you read those words together!) means it's nice to know the caravan's equipped with a shower, albeit cramped. Unfortunately even that small luxury I may have to do without since these last few days the water pump seems to be giving up the ghost, its engine struggling and often failing to cope with the effort of keeping up the water pressure. It even began spurting water where the pump fits in the socket, on the outside. I rang the dealer who sold me the caravan and he said the insurance won't cover a repair unless it fails completely, i.e. pumps nothing, but apparently you can buy replacement pumps quite cheaply. I then tried taking it all apart, including the socket, and putting it back together again which seemed to do the trick at first when I did the washing up, but demanding any larger quantity of water is putting stress on the poor pump again.
So if you do come and visit me make sure to leave your sense of smell at home, until I somehow manage to fix this properly.
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