The curse of nature…

Yes, as human beings we are always apt to complain about the weather – no matter what nature throws our way, it is always too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet. And it is apparent that the insect world will never yield control of the Earth without dreadful war.

We’ve gone overnight from bone-dry scalding heat to autumnal chill, and a bit of cold rain – enough to light the woodstove now neatly installed in the big salon fireplace. (Where its heat doubles as a spirited offense against a huge nest of Asiatic wasps we discovered hanging in the top of the chimney. We are cooking it and its contents to death – at least that’s the theory.)

In addition to wasps and yellow jackets, Mother Nature has thrown other curses in our path. Our flowered prairie is inundated with les mauvaises herbes – bad weeds – that require hand pulling while one is trying to balance in the muddy field without stepping on the pretty flowers.

So we’ve added weeding that huge patch of space to our regular routine of re-weeding the lavender we planted along the long stonewall, plus the equally long line of roses and rosemary, plus the long hedge we installed in front of the barn.

Yikes.

We spend so much time weeding and mowing that we gave up trying to harvest our plums. Three trees worth shed their fruit uselessly on the ground this year without more than a few reaching our table. Sad, but there is just no time for the jams, jellies, chutneys, liqueurs I concocted last year.

If Burt Bacharach were around he’d probably rewrite his famous ‘raindrops’ song to read ‘hazelnuts keep falling on my head’. The two trees bordering the courtyard pelt us day and night, littering the gravel paths with nuts, pods, and leaves. We manfully scoop them up every morning only to find what seems like double the amount by afternoon. (We wouldn’t bother except that they make the grass lawn and pristine white gravel terrace look like hell.)

What to do with a jillion hazelnuts?