24th July FONTE DOS CLERIGOS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Claire!!! XXX

So while I did all our washing (by hand) Brett got back to digging his trench. It wasn’t as hot today, only 33°!! The washing was dry after being on the line for a couple of hours.

I weeded some of the vegetable beds and re-sowed parsley and coriander; I had zero germination from both of these the first time round and this evening, when I was doing my watering, I found out why ................... there were two a colonies of ants (one on the parsley bed and one on the coriander) with two columns of ants each leading to and from the seed beds (to their nest); each ant leaving the seed bed was carrying a seed (even coriander seeds, which were far bigger than the ants) and taking it down a hole in the ground, there were hundreds of the buggers and they kept going until all the seeds were gone!!!! I’ve never had that problem before and apart from ant powder (which I’ve never used) I have no idea what to do about them.

Now I’ve got to catch whatever’s chewing the seedlings; I can’t think that it’s ants as I would see them on the plants. And it isn’t rabbits (or wild boar) as there are no foot prints or droppings, and anyway the chewing is too small; so we’re wondering if it’s a night-time moth/beetle/caterpillar (I’ve spent ages looking in the daytime to no avail), if we were in Wales I would definitely blame slugs (it’s the right kind of damage) but I haven’t seen one here.

Brett spent a couple of hours helping Gary with his building work; he was supposed to be supervising Gary doing it but ended up doing most of the work himself.