Some rain, lots of fruit and vegetables

Heavy rain across Europe

In July you do not normally expect rain showers, but with the ever changing weather patterns of the world, the recent bad weather that caused loss of life in many European countries arrived to us, albeit with less strength and less water dropped. Fortunately for Tuscany, the wind strengths and the rain were low, it did rain consistently for a day, or around 12 hours, but soon diminished but it still aided the growth of the vegetables in our kitchen garden, with all the plants looking seriously stronger after the rain.

Peaches and Pears

The fruit trees also started to look like they were ready to give up their bounty, we had already had a small peach tree give us amazing peaches the week before the rain, probably due to its location it was earlier than the remainder of our peach trees. This time it was the turn of the pear trees, which we pick off the tree hard and leave them to ripen in a dark cool place. There are 4 more heavily laden peach trees and we hope these will be ready soon, they will then be used in cakes, frozen, put in syrup and made into jam, all very tasty!

I have decided its nice to have rain in July, but it needs to be enough to give the ground a good soaking as the effects from humidity on the plants can be a cause of concern.