Changing Seasons

[sherree]

Hi its Sherree's partener Paul.
While i was sitting at the bottom of the garden this morning with my coffee feeling a bit sorry for myself because of the nerve damage to my shoulder and being off work now 3 weeks.
As i was waiting for Sherree to get home from a night shift at the hospital . I was looking over towards Manston Airport in the distance and watching the local farmer preparing the fields for next years crops, i looked up skyward and noticed the annual gathering of the housemartins.
These little birds arrive down here in Kent during April all the way from Africa and normally signal the start of the better weather, I suppose its natures way of signaling the start of summer.
This time of year they gather here and stock up on flying insects before the attemp to make the crossing over the channel on the way back to there winter feeding grounds. Some of them dont fly over the channel on there way back they use the ferry as there means of transport you can see them perched on top as the ferry leaves Dover.
At the moment there must be over 300 of them flying over the house and the telephone lines out the front are being used as gathering places, no superfast fibre optic broadband down here in the sticks.
The down side to this wonderful airshow is it signals the change in seasons yet again .
Now we must take stock of which plants need to be put away and how will they all fit in the greenhouse and which ones can be given some protection to get them through the coming winter.

All the best Paul.

[Dave Brown]

We get the influx here as well, feeding above the North Kent marshes but was a few days ago. Maybe they make their way across Kent for a few days before heading across the channel. Very few actually spend the summer here.

I've been drawing up plans for the winter 'pull in' for the last couple of weeks, and have frightened myself with the number of pots I have to make space for, before I start digging the monster plants out. I need a serious Tardis exercise to pull this off, this year.