Another Weekend in Lockdown
Another weekend in lockdown and things in Ynyslas were pretty much the same as they have been every weekend lately. The beach was looking lovely in the sunny spells.
The torrential downpours were impressive in their own right. At one point on Sunday afternoon the Borth & Ynyslas Weather Station was reading a rain rate of over 120mm per hour!! It didn’t last long though and it is needed as the last few months have been particularly dry. We are only halfway through June and despite only having had 30mm of rain, that is still twice as much as we had in April and May combined, showing just how dry those months were.
The bees seem to be enjoying the weather and are doing well. We found a whole load of them on some bright yellow brassica plant on some waste-ground by the boatyard on Saturday. I’m not 100% sure what the plant was, possibly rape but almost definitely something from the mustard family. Obviously I can’t be 100% sure that they were our bees either, but it’s not that far from our house (about 800m as the bee flies) and with the brambles and bindweed that were also present along the embankment it is probably the best source of forage for them at the moment. There were bees on the brambles and bindweed too so hopefully they are feasting well from here. There aren’t many other people with bees in the vicinity. In fact, until last year there were none for miles around. The garden centre and kennels now have some hives though and these are about the same distance from this food source as our bees are so it could have been bees from there as well. That’s not a bad thing of course because we always used to have trouble getting our virgin queens to mate. Last year was possibly the first year that we were successful at doing so – having some other colonies in the vicinity has to help with that.
The Ynyshir Hall takeway on Sunday was delicious too, and this week there was some free wine tasting from Dylanwad Wine in Dolgellau while I was waiting for the collection.
The lockdown continues, Anna has been told to continue shielding until the middle of August so I can’t see much changing in the meantime. Morgan does have a slightly more intense couple of weeks ahead though with mock exams to do most days. He doesn’t seem to bothered about them but it will mean some earlier starts for him – As a teenage boy that’s not his favourite thing as he would prefer to be nocturnal if he could get away with it!
