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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: weather

Confused.com

19 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by sallynex in climate change

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

climate change, rain, warm December, weather

sweetrocket

This weather though!*

We don’t quite have daffodils up and blooming here, like they do in all points from Cornwall to Cheshire apparently: but we do have a lot of confused flowers.

Never mind spring flowers, either: we have summer flowers in bloom here. Asparagus peas in brick red, marigolds and celandines, pretty little pinks and neon-coloured salvias still going strong. The sweet rocket has been in bloom since April; we have hellebores and strawberry flowers and even the tree chilli is gamely putting out a few purple blossoms.

marigold

I don’t blame them: I’m confused myself. The temperatures we’ve got right now, in the mid-teens, are more akin to what you’d get in June.

Mind you, the torrential rain and stormy weather is of more normal December quantities, so you still get the horizontal rain blowing your hat into the next county and ankle-deep mud to slosh through on your way to get up the veg garden to pick the kale for tea. Only difference is, you’re doing it in a t-shirt (bare arms dry so much quicker than jumpers, don’t you think?)

hellebore

Apparently it’s something to do with the Azores, a straggle of half-forgotten islands about four hours’ travel off the west coast of Portugal. Maybe they’re getting their own back for nobody knowing or much caring where they are on the map. I can’t help noticing their weather is more-or-less exactly the same as ours right now. Rather worryingly it goes up to 18°C next week. Hope that’s not coming our way.

It’s not going to stop till at least the middle of next month. After that, who knows: maybe we’ll get the deep freeze the Express was screaming about last month (rather laughably, as it turns out).

I do hope so, or we won’t have any apples, blackcurrants or garlic next year. All three depend on a prolonged spell of chilling: 7°C day and night for three weeks is the figure generally bandied about.

celandine

Rhubarb and strawberries need chilling for good crops, too: and goodness knows what’s going to happen to my strawbs this year. They were flowering in November, then we had one atypical night of hard frost and all the centres turned black. I thought that was it, but no: they’re off again.

At the moment my inclination is to pick off the flowers to persuade the plants to keep their energies for themselves for the time being: let’s just hope they’re not exhausted by spring.

The daffs are unlikely to be back, though: they have a once-only performance, so once you’ve had it, you’ve had it. This, though, is the new normal: for we have forgotten what the old normal even means any more. So we’d better get used to it, I’m afraid.

*Apologies to those of you who prefer their sentences grammatically correct: my ability to write in adult is dwindling the longer I live with two teenagers. Roughly translated, for those of you over the age of, oh, 15, this means ‘Goodness, isn’t the weather remarkable for the time of year!’ Which makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket instead.

Disappearing under water

15 Tuesday Jan 2008

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

flooding, january, rain, weather

As I write, I’m listening to the sound of a gale howling around my house and the rain splattering the windows with a viciousness which makes you realise why they talk about nasty weather. I’ve just had to cancel my third garden this week – and that’s after last week when I only made it to one of my clients and was washed out for the rest.

There’s nothing more depressing than being forced to stay indoors when you don’t want to. There’s not even anything very nice to look at outside: the path around the greenhouse I’ve been digging in my garden (of which, hopefully, more later) is now a stream, and when I walked down the garden to let the chickens out I was splashing through the film of water that now covers the lawn. The water table is as high as it’s ever been in my normally dry and sandy conditions, and even if it were sunny you’d have to bail out a hole before you could dig it.

I’m sorry – I do try to be optimistic on the whole – but January is, by far, the worst month of the year.

Back again!

14 Friday Sep 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Tags

rain, weather

No prizes for guessing where I’ve been!

What precious seconds I’ve had to spare this summer in between juggling small children on school holiday and the normal demands of work have been spent out in the garden dodging the raindrops, so my computer has remained lonely and neglected in the corner. Now though with autumn in the air and everything beginning to wind down, and – most importantly perhaps? – the kids back at school, it’s time to catch up with what’s been going on!

Verdict on this summer – a washout, and I think everyone agrees. It hasn’t been much fun for anyone on the beach, but I think it’s been fantastic for the garden despite misery-guts moaning about floppy perennials from telly gardeners. That just hasn’t been my experience at all: the roses have been flowering fit to bust, having for once in their lives had enough water all summer in my thin sandy soil; my Amelanchier – which I shouldn’t really be growing since it’s from the American wetlands – has put on a foot of growth; and I haven’t had to pick up the hosepipe once. After the horrors of last year’s drought, I’ve been revelling in this summer: the light may have made it hard to catch the flowers at their shining best, but they really have been at the best I’ve ever seen them. And a few wet pairs of gardening gloves is a small price to pay for that.

Sun today, rain tomorrow

14 Monday May 2007

Posted by sallynex in cutting garden, greenhouse, seeds

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Tags

summer bedding, weather

The weather really can’t make up its mind. We’ve just had the driest spring on record: six weeks without a single drop of rain. And that’s in 20-degree temperatures – by English standards, that’s summer. My poor garden was getting more dessicated than a Dr Who victim (sorry, my 7-year-old is obsessed and I therefore have an hour’s Dr Who indoctrination every Saturday evening. It has a way of seeping into everything else, too.)

Now, we’ve had nothing but rain for more than a week. Admittedly, that’s far more typical of your average English spring, but we do usually have the odd dry-but-cloudy spell to ring the changes. Now the path down the garden is once again under three inches of water and I can’t get out there as it’s a quagmire and there’s no point planting anything until it dries out a bit.

My greenhouse is very well-tended, anyway – the only dry spot in the place. I put my cucumbers into the earth border today (this post should probably go in my allotment blog but what the hell). They’re “Cum Laude F1” – the seed cost a bomb but lovely little plants. The rest of the greenhouse is bursting at the seams – I’m sowing seed every two weeks all this year to keep allotment, cutting garden and Christopher Lloyd summer bedding scheme in full production, and my humble little 6ft by 8ft can hardly stand the pace.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

24 Wednesday Jan 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

gardening, snow, weather

Excuse me for getting excited – but I just love the snow. It’s powdering my garden to a depth of about 2″ this morning – not much to hardened northerners but for us softy southerners here in Surrey it’s unusually thick and a real novelty!

The only trouble is that it’s the one weather condition (with the possible exception of gale-force winds accompanied by driving torrential rain) which will stop me gardening. I’ve had to cancel one garden this morning and it’s probable I’ll be having some forced holiday time tomorrow morning as well.

Not great for the bank balance – one of the rare disadvantages of life as a gardener is that you don’t always choose when you take your (unpaid) holidays, and the weather is always awful. Or at least cold. Never mind – I can always look out of the window!

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