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Weather diary page

April 5: Ticks have emerged en masse. One day the dogs had none, the next they were all covered. (M)Tu ji stared laying after 5mths, were keen to lay their eggs in the house, my house that is. Cute, but had to discourage it. Too noisy for one thing.
April 8: Moderate rainfall has continued almost every day for last couple of weeks. A couple of cool days but not cold. Main thing to report is the 'greyness'. Long time since i've seen the sun - like months or more. Tomatoes are still going but large numbers were demolished by unknown birds which allowed fruit flies in. Slow moving typ in central ppe
April 13: First super hot day. After complaining about no sun, now here it is. Give me back the cloud cover! House is pretty much unbearable. Noticed a rash of those ornery looking lizards fighting - when they are in a tussle they really go for it and don't care about anything else. you can be centimetres away from them. Obviously breeding season. Maybe a cool change coming through tonight - i hope so. Precious few days left to tackle those outside jobs. Turning air con on today and putting up black shade cloth. Plentiful rain over the last couple of weeks - not big falls but enough to take care of watering.
April 18: The mid-april season change seemed to work this year - what was probably the last coldfront (with moderate dbjf) came through and knocked it back to 19-20 here for a couple of days on 14-15th - 'trackpants at night and two summer quilts' level at least - but from the 16th it's been hot. Esp mornings when the sun is shining. Deep, dirty yellow, almost red moon tonight. Sign of haze in the air. No rain since that wet early april period. With hot weather onset need to water often. vegie garden pretty much collapsed but still getting asparagus. Strange looking large but very sleder wasp - brightly colored yellow and black appeared. A pretty hopeless flier and not aggressive. Quite beautiful actually. nightjars still going strong. fruitflies appear to have been burnt off pretty much. cokroaches emerging. Black, hairy caterpillar home invasion.
April 20: Snakes seem to be coming out. This is about the time of year last year I saw the two enormous male rat snakes fighting over a hot snake babe. (M)Also saw what i assume was a rat snake - brown, but not overly big, and not initially that scared of me, which made me wonder - slithered up onto a boulder and then disappeared.
April 30: Phenomenal run of gloomy skies (though very little rain). Only 19.4hrs of sunshine for mar in cheng gong according to cwb (lowest by far for anywhere in Taiwan - that's pretty good going considering the competition), and i'm guessing it will be something similar for April. Warm and humid recently but did get a significant cool change come in with a moderate dbjf the last couple of days - track pants back on at night. Few tomatoes still struggling on, asparagus going strong. No sign of flying ants so far - should hatch any day now. Saw two tu fong gathering around black shade cloth today - have seen the odd one zooming around but these guys were taking their time, landing, and having a definite pow wow. There's something very attractive about that black shade cloth. Last year it also hosted significant gatherings of them. Disturbs me a bit, coz that was very late in the season - this year the word seems to be out from the get-go that my porch is the place to hang out. There's actually an array of wasps out now, some quite beautiful, though haven't seen the big black shiny one yet this year. A dirty brownish one, that looks like a tigerhead body shape, though dont' think it is, buzzed me in the same spot a couple of times on the path to the chook shed - guessing it has a nest nearby. The ones that build individual nests are a lot less aggressive, however, than the massive hive guys. Slipstream of clouds sliding up from around hong kong that ride a familar curve up to Taiwan - no real rain here so far but we could get something out of this. Mei yu must be about to crank up soon.