Every year is different.

"Every year is different"   That should be one of the first things you learn to say living here,  it doesn't matter how well things are growing,  there always seems to be something that doesn't do well and when you talk to the many Pacos that work their land here in Montenegro,   you can pretty much guarantee  that's what they'll say.    There has either been too much rain or not enough,  too hot too early or too cold for too long,  or because of the wind that came in the night/during the day/last week/last month......delete as appropriate. 

We have decided that whatever we can grow is a bonus,  not to get too miffed when the wind blows the peas over,  when blackfly cover your broad beans,  when a wild boar runs through the strawberry beds,  when someones cat tries to dig up the potatoes and use the ground as their litter tray,  when somebodies dog/cat has run through the just about grown kohlrabi and squashed them,  when - as has happened this year - certain plants have just stopped growing completely!   Last years chillis are flowering and making chillis whereas this years  seeds took ages to germinate and when they eventually got big enough to repot, then stopped growing and even now are only a few inches high.  The peppers aren't much better but at least they are bigger and don't fruit till September time so fingers crossed for them.  The pak choi which are just big enough to start picking leaves from for salads have now decided to flower and will probably bolt upwards rapidly, except that I'm hoping to have stopped that from happening by pinching out the buds. 

The pears - photo recently put on here -  have all rotted this week!  One by one,  they've gone completely brown and squidgy and we had to pick them off for the compost.  We didn't want them dropping on the ground as Pip would most likely have eaten them  and then been ill.   Probably insects in them,  didn't look too closely,  but we never have a problem with the pear tree.    Our neighbours pear tree,  a different variety,  more like a Conference pear,  is usually heavily laden and we start to pick them in August,  but this year I can only see about a dozen pears on there.

The apple trees which flowered beautifully this spring haven't got any fruit at all.  Nor has our neighbours apple tree.  Strange.

But not everything is like that.  The cardoons - which we grow for their wonderful flowers but the locals grow for the fleshy base of the leaves - that's the bit you eat but they don't look very appetising to us - they are blooming beautifully now, even the buds before they open are colourful.

The mimosa - sorry, yes again! - is amazing.  And growing underneath this one are oleanders whose flowers are so heavy that the heads are bowing under the weight.  They have a wonderful rich almondy smell almost like marzipan as you walk past.

Talking of the scent of flowers,  the other morning as I took the dogs out I opened the gate and thought there was a faint smell of something familiar,  maybe soap,  remember coaltar soap?  Strange thing to smell up here or anywhere really.  Then again the next morning same thing but also a buzzing from close by.  No,  I'm not hearing things or going mad!  But the palm tree next to the gate is in flower and the buzzing was the bees, the smell was the flower.

There is a bee just approaching from the left......see it against the branch?  Also bees were in the flowers but they're not visible. 

Unfortunately we can't eat most of the stuff that is growing so well but we can enjoy the colour and scent of it all.