After a disastrously long, murky summer that has been reported as the wettest on record, it’s the first day of fall - and ironically, sunny and baking hot!

ONE sunny day!

All the farmers are turning out frantically into the spoiled fields to try to recover what they can from a crop that was considered lost. We managed to bale one of our fields, but the other three were just sulking, and Rich isn’t even sure what he wants to do with them - the grasses have gotten so long and heavy that they’ve fallen over, and new grass is growing up through them.

Rich's tractor rides again!

He did get out and mow one field, though, and turned it today, so if the weather holds, he may take a day off from harp-making tomorrow and bale. He makes harps at the major harp producer of Wales, Telynau Teifi. When he went to work there they agreed that he can take off work when hay-making demands, so tomorrow might be one of those days…

We bought a huge box of bananas at the farmer’s market on Friday for three pounds, and I was all set to make banana chutney with them. But the lure of the hot, bright day outside was too much to resist. In Wales, you learn to go outside whenever the sun shines, because the opportunities are so rare. So the chutney-making will have to wait…

Instead, I went out to the polytunnel with Joli and Benjamin. Joli played her flute, and Boo and I dug nettles out of the huge heap that stands up above the polytunnel. There’s the most fantastic soil there, dark and loamy like chocolate cake, because it’s the site of the old compost heap. I have a dream of masses of pink roses there, inter-planted with lavendar and purple alliums. Just a dream, since at the moment it’s all nettles and dirt. But it’s good for a girl to dream…

Inside the polytunnel

And speaking of dreams, I just had one come true! I’ve always longed for a real, proper gorgeous fountain. The other day at Chadzy’s, the reclamation yard, we saw one that made my heart go pitter-pat. A lovely cast iron, festooned with the most gorgeous green lichens and ochre rust, with a lion’s head like the one in Scrooge. I loved it at first sight. And Rich, bless his indulgent heart, just looked at me and sighed and gave in to the inevitable…

It was not only desperately expensive but terribly heavy, and quite a job getting it home, involving a trip on the flat trailer, a forklift and a lot of maneuvering on the other end. But it’s settled now against the stone wall of Rich’s workshop, looking like it’s always been there. I’m imagining it smothered in white roses…

Don’t know what the thing with roses is lately, I seem obsessed with them! In California I could grow them all year round, of course, but here they only do well in the heat of summer - if there is any heat in the summer. Sigh…My gardening teacher actually said to me that you can’t grow roses out in rural Wales, because there isn’t enough pollution in the air, and sulphur kills the black spot that infests roses! I think I’ll plump for the lovely clean air, give my roses lots of sheep manure and hope for the best.

Rich was out today baling Mike’s field with the big blue tractor, and we went to visit him while he was working. Benji would have loved it but unfortunately fell fast asleep in the car on the way over. I always love watching Rich handle a tractor - this one had the baler behind it, and it’s terribly hypnotic to watch the teeth of the baler sucking in the loose hay, then turning it over to be pummeled into a tidy rectangular bale, tied with twine and spit out the back into the baked golden field.

The thing I love about Wales is that when it’s sunny, everything sparkles. No dust anywhere, and everything just glows as if it’s been polished. When it rains, it feels as though the sun will never shine again. But when it’s sunny, like today, it feels like an endless summer, all blue skies and fragrant hay and green hills that roll on endlessly, like the hills in a story book…