John found at least five wasp nests sat in the muck heap

Feels like I have never been away. It’s not as if John had made much of a hole in the all the fruit I left him. He went into a mad social whirl with me away and as a lonely bachelor got invited out nearly every night for a meal. He has a very effective way of looking hard done to.

One of his best invites was to a local village show. The friends he went with took their Jack Russell Stig with the idea of entering him for a terrier race. At first Stig did not have much idea of what racing was all about and even came out of his box backwards. But the excitement of the moment soon got to him and he came second. Plus getting into a good fight at the end.

After John had a meal with friends who live in the area. “What more could you wish for” he said “A great day out with good friends and a fantastic meal with them as well.”

Obviously I am redundant.

I commented to John on the lack of wasps in the orchard and the perfection of the fruit on the trees. Similarly the grapes in the porch are magnificent, sweet and plump, and again no ravages by wasps. I had set a number of pop bottle wasp traps in the fruit trees, but even they had very few victims drowned in the syrup.

It all seemed strange as before I went away with Jess, the wasps were getting to be a terrible nuisance. We even suspected that there was a hornets nest but had not been able to locate any nests on the farm.

“That’s till I came to spread the muck heap,” John said. “Then the wasps really started to get a bit excited.”

John had hired a big muck spreader for the day to get rid of the big muck heap that had been there since the foldyards were cleaned out at the end of winter.

“There were at least five nests in the heap,” John said “And I haven’t seen a wasp on the farm since I destroyed the nests when I spread the muck. Mind you I had to keep the windows on the tractor tight shut.

“The wasps weren’t best pleased.”

He has certainly been busy while I have been sitting by a pool. The field beans have been harvested, that particular field ploughed and he is now power harrowing it to get a good seed bed. Unfortunately the warm weather that suits the plums, has dried the soil out that has been turned over when ploughed and made it very hard to break down into a fine tilth.

“You can never get the weather just as you want it” John said.

You can in Spain I thought.

Mrs Down’s Diary