It was inevitable that after the fabulous May and June, the weather would eventually change, and as is often the case, July began with cooler and often showery conditions.

At least this meant that the garden required minimal supplementary watering, after many weeks of doing so, and all the plants which had been on the verge of dying, or at best failing for this year, revived.

Many plants also finished flowering early this year including in the hay meadows, so it looks like July will be a bit lean on flower interest in some areas of the garden.

The upper hay meadow which was still largely uncut in the first weeks of July has passed into a wonderful pink, beige, and gold stage with highlights from the purple betony and other colourful flowers still hanging on after the early season induced by the weather.

A few days away in early July, which coincided with the wettest week we’ve had in months, gave both meadows and garden a huge boost, and many of the upper meadow flowers seemed to have a secondary flush of flowers, whilst the large sections of the already cut lower hay meadow began to bloom in profusion.

The wet sump area of this field with its very different flora, still had a huge number of butterflies and moths in it, with me counting over 10 butterflies on the flowers of a single plant of the early variant of Devils-bit Scabious which is gradually establishing here. Given the recent rains, I now have many vigorous root-trained plugs which we hope to get planted out soon.

Not surprisingly photo opportunities have diminished with our absence and the wetter weather, but there have still been wonderful light conditions on occasions.

A day of note was July 17th, when the sun shone a little more after a couple of very wet, cool days, and the terrace was suddenly filled with high-flying, noisy honey bees. I’d noticed the day before that the weakest, Swedish butter churn hive had a few bees around the lower entrance which hasn’t actually been used by any of the colony’s bees since the colony was set up there. Sure enough, it turned out the colony was being robbed out, and simultaneously so too was the larch-copse hive, which after swarming earlier in May, into the vacant German butter churn box, had never recovered, though this later settled down and was possibly even taken over by another late swarm. At least by the end of the month, it still seemed to have viable bee activity and efficient guarding behaviour. It had gradually seemed to be heading into (probably) a queen-less, drone-heavy level of activity in recent weeks. The PV hive was clearly the origin of many, if not all of the robbing bees, so a typically efficient and speedy re-distribution of resources from failing hive, to strong, was underway.

The rest of the month continued in the same vein with rain on most days, cool and often breezy. However not the extreme rainfall we sometimes get here during our “summer”.

A real thrill was spotting and managing a single photo of a Clouded Yellow, Colias croceus butterfly in our upper hay meadow, and a couple of days later the first Hummingbird hawkmoth, Macroglossum stellatarum, nectaring very efficiently on “John’s” unknown Salvia.

Otherwise, it was a disappointing July, with probably the lowest levels of light recorded since our PV inverter was installed 13 years ago, but at least after the dry early start to late spring and early summer, no supplementary watering has been needed and the Hydrangeas are beginning to look good as we head into August.

Despite the generally cool and grey conditions we still had a late July ant swarm event on July27th when the white-washed barn wall and the air above were filled with flying ants – sadly there were no swallows to eat them since most seem to have left early this year, after the worst summer we can recall for their breeding – as far as we know, only 1 early chick fledged.

The eventual rainfall total of 201.3mm for the month, with just 5 dry days and the PV output of just 377.75 KWH confirms it as one of the most disappointing Julys we’ve experienced in recent years.