It’s been a busy month – guests (who’ve all been absolutely lovely), fleeting visits to the UK (my mother’s house is on the market), Patrick has started a new job, the bees need our attention… so despite all my best intentions, regular blogging has fallen to the bottom of the to-do list… along with far too many other things.
Oh, and probably the biggest challenge is working with our appalling internet connection – even in rural France, you’d expect better than a 0.10mb download speed and a 0.02 upload speed. Okay, I admit that those speeds are the worst we experience but they’re not uncommon and it makes uploading photos next to impossible… unless I get up at 3am.
Right, whinging over…
In spite of the above, I was determined to hit Lucy’s Tree Following – May deadline so here we go.
The tree in silhouette against a west sky shows the slow development of the leaves. After a warm late March / first few weeks in April, it has been colder, windier and there’s been lots of rain. Our rainwater capture tank (5000 lites which does all the outside watering and also flushes our loos) has been at 100% every day.
The leaves further down the tree – bottom half, probably – are more advanced compared to those higher up as the higher the tree the more exposed to the wind it is. And often, tucked away in our fold of the hill, it is several degrees colder at the top of the drive in comparison to the south terrace of the house.
“Normal” flowering time for the sweet chestnuts in this area is first half of June. My tree is certainly on schedule for that but if the promised warm weather arrives at the end of this week (yes, right!) with the amount of moisture in the ground, the flowers may be early.
It’s interesting to see how the habit of the two trees mirror each other. Yes, I know that’s what trees of the same type do – think of avenues of trees planted along roadsides, long drives… but it’s useful to see it pictured so clearly in the landscape.
And just to finish off, not a full moon this time but…
Lovely photos, Carole, and your tree is looking very handsome in its new foliage. I look forward to seeing it for myself before long.
Over here our ash trees haven’t got a leaf between them yet, so is summer going to be just a splash?
This tree has such ‘presence’. I imagine the horsechestnut trees are further advanced?
Sorry not to have got back to you on this, Lucy. Work has got in the way. Though I do value the money that comes from work! I’m not sure if the trees are further advanced in this specific part of Normandy than, for eg, south-western England. I read somewhere that average annual temperature rises 1°C for each 100 miles you travel south. So as we are about 250 miles south of Wiltshire where we used to live, that’s only 2.5°C warmer here.
If we were closer to the coast (we’re about 45 minutes away from the south of the western coast of the Cotentin peninsula (Cherbourg is around 2 hours away at the top) we would, I’m sure, see a difference in trees and shrubs breaking into leaf in spring. As we are a bit inland and about 300m above sea level, that cancels the coastal benefits and I think we are probably about equal with southern England.
However, driving around the coasts in March and April, I usually notice that leaves and blossom is well ahead of us, a mere 20 or so miles away and, for example, the fairly tender mimosas which I’m sure I couldn’t grow, a flowering profusely in gardens near the coast.
The tree was looking lovely in May. I hope your June entry is just as good.