Friday 2nd July 2021 - What a Week, Spanish and Algae Bloom

Up until today, what an awful week it has been. The forecasts have been far from correct and throughout, the predictions have changed from day to day. No just wet and grey but cold too. Our heating has cut in first thing in the morning and then again late afternoon; not the sort of thing we expect at the end of June. Today we have seen a vast improvement, the sun has come out and some much appreciated warmth was felt this afternoon, as we walked to Northrepps and back. The butterflies welcomed it too, I saw speckled woods, meadow browns and red admirals all enjoying the wild flowers and freshly opened blackberry blossom, along with bees and other pollinating insects. Unfortunately the weekend weather looks dismal, so no meat for the BBQ was purchased this morning from the Mundesley Butcher.

I don’t want to keep going on about slugs but I have found out a bit more about the type we are seeing in our garden. They are the Spanish variety which, according the site I found on the internet, cannot be deterred by the usual methods, slug pellets are not effective and hedgehogs won’t eat them because they are too slimy (yuk!). The advice is to ‘roll up your sleeves’, collect them and then dispose as you see fit. This we have been doing but then I noticed a squashed slug on the path was proving attractive to live slugs. Another search on the internet, asking the question, ‘are slugs cannibals’ and the answer is, yes. So it seems advantageous to leave a few bodies around as they are proving to be more attractive than our lettuce of bean seedlings. Our evening ventures out into the garden with torches and suitable items to exterminate (sounds a bit like the Daleks) them are proving effective, each evening we are seeing fewer slugs attacking our plants and on the grass.

Today’s photo is of the algae bloom which has been washing up on our beach since mid-May; for some reason has been around a lot longer this year. Initially it gives off an odour that we can smell in our garden, now it is no longer smelly but the unsightly foam, which sticks to dogs paws and footwear, remains.