After the extraordinary spring weather of 2025, which was both delightful and record-breaking, it was with some relief that the rain began to fall at the end of May and continued into the beginning of June.

A small pre-booked group visit in the first week managed to avoid any showers, and see masses of flowers, examples of which Fiona picked for our table bowls on the morning of their visit.

(The Met Office has now confirmed that not only has it been the warmest and sunniest spring in Wales and the UK, EVER, but only 3 summers have ever been sunnier seasons than this spring in the UK since 1910 – a remarkable statistic indeed. A little rain in mid-April meant that it was only the sixth driest spring on record in Wales. (It’s well worth studying their detailed data, maps and comments about such an exceptional period of weather.)

However, despite rain falling on most days in early June, there were enough breaks in the clouds for photography, outside work and much delight at the early appearance of many of our early summer stalwarts.

Both wildflower hay meadows have many more single and multiple patches of orchids appearing in them, even if the actual hay crop looks very light so far.

The roses, particularly our several ramblers are having a wonderful year, and delighting our bees.

And there’s always something to observe with our honey bees. Walking back up the track after a chevron run-off clearing session – the first in months – I first heard and was then walking through many noisy low flying bees. Not a swarm, I think, but a robbing out event of the larch trunk hive, which has had more changes of ownership than any other of our hives, over the years. Meanwhile, the most active and productive hay-shed hive, was almost as active and noisy, but just with its own returning noisy drones, from their virgin queen hunting missions.

The month continued with a similar run of weather – rain on most days, but not intense, and then a much warmer sunny day on the 11th, when temperatures reached the low twenties.

I spent a bit of time filming orchids in the top wildflower meadow, and was delighted to find not only over 1,000 heath and common spotted hybrid forms, but 18 Greater Butterfly Orchids – a species now quite uncommon. I’ve previously only found one or two, and none last year, so this is very exciting.

Simultaneously, the swallows seem to be having their best year in ages. Despite only appearing to have a few adults using the barn, compared to the many pairs that used to nest, just 15 years ago, the benign spring, and happy hunting grounds for the parents over our wildflower meadows has meant 7 chicks resting up on the main beams of the barn, having left their nests, by June 13th.

I continued to collect rainwater in tubs beneath the barn drip line, realising that not only was this a valuable extra resource in this dry year, but that I could use it to make up diluted worm juice watering cans much faster than filling them with a hose.

After last year’s write off for vegetable growing, I’ve managed to get some decent crops established, after sowing later in April, and the apricots have begun ripening by the 10th, with the biggest crop ever, after bumper natural honey bee pollination.

I’ve also spent a bit of time sorting out saved seed, from Narcissus pseudonarcissus X (150 seeds) seedpods collected from the upper the meadow, as well as Crocus tommasinianus.(150 seeds). And finished collecting the very few Daphne bholua berries which form each year and cleaned up the seeds (4 seeds), which I’ll cold stratify in the fridge for a few weeks before sowing. For the first time I’m offering packets of some of these seeds free, in the quantities shown above, to any readers who fancy making a small contribution of £6.99 to the costs of running this blog and website, which is still free to access after all these years of effort.😊

This is what some of my Daphne bholua plants look like, 2 years after sowing seeds in the summer of 2023

I happened to be around when the 7 swallow chicks made their first outside sortie, with  great excitement all round in the early evening. But the chicks bunked out of flying back into the barn through the narrow opening we leave them, so I stood inside the barn and opened the door. They all flew in and there was the most excited chatter from them all.

We had another weekend of garden visitors mid-month, who mostly escaped rain, but the flower bowls looked a bit sorry after overnight rain, and the drizzle returned by the Sunday afternoon.The following day the sun shone, temperatures rose, and I was lucky to hear, watch and film a swarm move into the same hive (around midday), which had been staked out for well over a fortnight. A good job this hadn’t happened a day earlier, since this is the closest hive to the route our gusts walked.

It turned out to be an interesting weather week, with me cutting our first hay 3 days later when the temperature hit 28 degrees C on a glorious sunny day with a breeze. Hard work, but the meadows looked so glorious: it was a wonderful working environment.

However by the end of the day, the sunny for 3 days forecast had changed. Rain was now due on the third day, by late morning.

Even worse, the morning after the cut and first shake out, saw grey skies, little wind and light rain fall sporadically. An all too typical saga of West Wales haymaking.

Fortunately, it was still in the high twenties, and by lunchtime the sun broke through, the wind picked up, and by slotting in a couple more turns, and windrowing the rapidly drying grass, we were able to get it all safely inside the hay sheds by that evening, for 32 hour hay! It was in fact fortuitous that I stopped cutting when I did, on the first morning after Fiona discovered, inadvertently disturbed, and was then stung by a wasp leaving a nest high up in the lower hay shed. I had to destroy it as my first job of the day, before turning they hay on the second morning.  We ended the day exhausted, but on a high as the late sun filtered through the rest of the uncut meadow.

A second swarm had moved into the vacant stump hive, during the day whilst we’d been occupied with haymaking, and the German butter churn hive was bearding – a sure sign of overcrowding and probably another swarm event to come soon, when the weather warms up again.

Undeterred by my previous days efforts, since the following day was the summer solstice, and I woke unusually early around 4.00am to a only partly cloudy sky, I walked up to the hut in my night things to sit and watch the solstice sunrise – something I’ve never done before. And a glorious, pastel, then golden, quiet experience.

As the weather cooled down and rain returned at some point on most days, we could recover a little from our efforts, with no prospect of more hay making in the days ahead. And knuckle down yo a lot more photo processing of the week’s sights.

 

The month played out with some rain on most days, but an opportunity to cut some more swathes of hay on June 29th/30th.

It seemed a fairly ordinary June month here, with 9 dry days, and 143.7 mm of rain, (the 4th wettest in my record, below) yet the Met Office tell us it was exceptional for warmth – being the hottest in England, and the second warmest in the UK as a whole, since records began. We were certainly grateful for the regular rain, since the month ended with the stream returning to low flow rates. A consequence of the record breaking spring of 2025.

The PV record of 459.77 KWH confirms that it was fairly average in terms of light levels, in my long term sequence of records. Maximum and minimum readings are highlighted:

2013: 73.5mm, 17 dry days, PV not available

2014: 41.55 mm, 19 dry days, PV –  542.15 KWH

2015: 74.9 mm, 20 dry days, PV –  520.24 KWH

2016: 115.7 mm, 10 dry days, PV – 413.44 KWH (No hay cut all month)

2017: 187.2mm, 12 dry days, PV – 371.8 KWH

2018: 24 mm, 18 dry days, PV – 550 KWH

2019: 158.8 mm, 10 dry days, PV – 402.2 KWH

2020: 174.5 mm, 5 dry days, PV – 415 KWH

2021: 33.1 mm, 17 dry days, PV – 477.4 KWH

2022: 124.3 mm, 12 dry days, PV – 470.6 KWH

2023: 68.9 mm, 15 dry days, PV – 561.9 KWH

2024: 66.9 mm, 14 dry days, PV – 443.7 KWH

2025: 143.7 mm, 9 dry days, PV – 459.7 KWH