August began with a lovely warm sunny day, following a run of 3 similar days at the end of July, which had us exhausted with a massive stint of semi-manual haymaking.

At least by the end of it, we had full hay sheds, even if we had masses of seed-filled hay left in the fields – the crop this year, courtesy of the ongoing strange weather, has been massive.

This is what the best bits of the garden looked like as I had a quick walk around.

However the month’s weather continued a theme for much of the last 15 months of being cloudier than normal, with some rain on most days, in spite of forecasts even the night before guaranteeing a rain-free day.

We had more issues with flystrike, and headfly problems during the month – 3 ewes had to be kept ‘inside’ in a lambing pen to help resolve secondary facial trauma caused by headfly.

And 3 lambs needed partial clipping of the back/neck fleece, since they attracted flystrike in spite of no soiling of wool anywhere – usually the trigger for attracting blowflies. Presumably because their longer coats (historically, we’ve never shorn lambs in their first year – perhaps this will have to change) simply haven’t been able to dry properly in the nearly constant wet and high humidity. In addition for the second year in a row we’ve had to use topical insecticides to help deal with the problem. And we potentially have another 6 weeks to go before the ‘fly season’ might end.

Hydrangeas have enjoyed a wonderful year, with all the soil moisture and humidity.

And a lovely scene of a Common Darter resting up on a Hydrangea macrophylla  ‘Blaumeise’  – the most stunning of the blue forms we grow – whilst taking ages to devour a small fly it had just caught.

A pure fluke finding whilst trimming overhanging bramble stems from the lower meadow hedges was finding a nearly full-size Emperor Moth, Saturnia pavonia, caterpillar. I’ve only ever seen an adult moth once, on Mynydd Llanllwni, nearly 20 years ago.

 

We’ve also made a massive effort to cut the huge amount of surplus green hay and spread it into the 4 paddocks we don’t cut for hay. So we can look forward to increasing plant diversity in these meadows, even if flowering is limited as the sheep graze them off.

Mid-month I enjoyed a fabulous Perseid display at 3.00 am, accompanied by distant sheet lightning, which came the morning after a gathering of 11 hyperactive swallows around the yard and meadows heralded the flying of the two swallow chicks of the season.

I now have a little more hope that we might see them return next year.

Sadly the quite rare blue and super moon, of August 19th wasn’t visible with a cloudy sky, but the following day, it was almost as impressive. Apparently this combination of blue, and super won’t occur again until August 2032.

The month ended with a couple of wonderful sunrises with fog shifting in the valley as the sun battled to rise higher. Well worth climbing up to the shepherd’s hut at 6.00am to watch.

The list of my weather records from previous years puts this August into a longer term context of being an incredibly variable month, but rarely one with extended sunny periods:

2013: 131.6mm 11 dry days. PV – N/A

2014: 169.9mm  9 dry days. PV 405.88 KWH

2015: 195.3 mm  6 dry days  PV 364.3 KWH

2016: 111.6mm 14 dry days PV 373.87 KWH

2017: 151.65 mm 5 dry days PV 337.71 KWH

2018: 150.4 mm 4 dry days PV 340.16 KWH

2019: 165.5 mm 9 dry days PV 414.2 KWH

2020: 260.4 mm 12 dry days PV 334.28 KWH

2021: 110.0 mm 12 dry days PV 354.4 KWH

2022: 43.4 mm 18 dry days PV 475.4 KWH

2023: 187.9 mm 5 dry days  PV 327.1 KWH

2024: 148.54 mm 7 dry days PV 367.7 KWH

The Met Office summary for the month, and summer as a whole, also demonstrate that it’s been the coolest for the UK since 2015.