I Like Driving In My Car

Mrs N#3 dragged me away from the computer for a few hours yesterday to go to a bloody garden centre the other side of Ripon. Flowers and stuff relating to flowers was all they sold, no plasma tellies or beer, nothing of interest to me. Apart from the lovely #3 I was the youngest person in there by about 20 years. So I had to amuse myself in the only way I know how.

"Lobelia, that sounds a bit like something else doesn't it?"

"Yes dear"

"Look at that enormous bushy Clematis. Clematis is a funny word isn't it, it sounds a bit like something else doesn't it?"

"Yes dear"

"Osteospermum! What does that remind you of?"

It kept me amused for half an hour anyway.

What did strike me on the way up there though was once again just how short most of the wheat crops were en-route. There wasn't as much rape in evidence as I thought there would be either. Almost all the rape was in full flower, but it frequently looked a little patchy.

Although it's forecast to warm up considerably this week (after three mornings of frost last week that will be surely welcome), it is set to remain largely dry. That won't help wheat catch up any, and the general shortness of it may mean it will have few stem reserves for filling the grain.

I can't see final wheat yields being any better than average at the very best this year. Indeed, as things stand at the moment, I'd say they will be pretty poor here in the north.

It could be worse though, a mate down in Devon tells me that one of his neighbours had his entire vineyard wiped out by frost last week.