Monday 15 February 2016
Out of the Blue
It’s been a mild winter so far. I was assuming it was going to carry on that way as you’ll may be aware I’ve put my potatoes into the greenhouse to chit. This was sort of based on the assumption we wouldn’t be getting any bitterly cold and frosty nights. After all it’s a mild winter. Then out of the blue comes Monday night or more accurately Tuesday morning.
Temperature Records for Sunday 14 - Tuesday 16 February 2016
The temperature fell to -3.7°C (25.3°F) making it the coldest night time temperature since 31 March 2013 when it fell to -3.8°C (25.2°F).
I’m hoping my seed potato aren’t frozen solid and that fleece has done its work.
Tuesday 16 February 2016
Late Snowdrops?
After a bitterly cold start to Tuesday it turned out to be a lovely winter’s day with clear blue skies all day long.
I’m sure our snowdrops normally come into flower before our miniature daffodils.
Not this year. Our snowdrops look like they’ll be in flower any day now but our daffs seem to have been in flower for a week or so. Perhaps the snowdrops are working to their usual timetable unfazed by the mild winter and the daffs are early because of the mild weather.
Wednesday 17 to Friday 19 February 2016
Chitters Spared
It’s been a mixed few days with some long sunny spells some days and dull at other times. Clear skies overnight have resulted in early morning frosts. The thermometer in the greenhouse got down to -3.7°C on Tuesday morning and was again below zero on Friday morning. I was hoping our potato tuber chitting in the greenhouse would survive the cold with only a few layers of fleece for protection. It’s been chilly in the greenhouse over the last few nights as the table below shows.
It was nice and sunny on Friday morning so I decided to venture up to the greenhouse and see how our potatoes looked. I pulled back the fleece from a few potatoes and they looked fine and a gentle squeeze of the tubers confirmed that they hadn’t been frosted and remained firm and not squelchy when tested.
Our apricot, which is grown in the greenhouse had its first few flowers opening in the morning sunshine.
I’m rubbish at taking photographs of white coloured flowers. I’m never all that happy with photos I take of snowdrops either so I’m going to have to do a bit of experimenting to see if I can do better. There’s plenty more buds on the apricot so I’ve got something to experiment on!
It’s also time for Sue to get her paintbrush out and do some insect impressions to pollinate the flowers. No self respecting insects will be about so early in February.
Saturday 20 & Sunday 21 February 2016
Distractions
Sunday turned out to be this February’s warmest day of the month reaching 14.3°C (57.7°F) early in the afternoon. Saturday was mild too and indeed if the only thing you take into consideration is temperature then you’d think we had a good weekend weather wise. That, however, wasn’t the case as it’s been windy all weekend and for the most of Saturday and Sunday it’s tried to rain too without ever really managing to do so.
As the weather didn’t do anything to persuade me work outside in the garden I decided to try improving my white flower photography. I decided to try on our orchid which has just come into flower. Camera on burst mode and manual focus I tried a couple of shots- well about 50 to be a little more accurate. Then the tricky bit deciding which was the best shot.
That looked better than my snowdrop efforts last week so I decided to try some snowdrops but this meant going outside. As I looked out of the window Woody arrived, perched in the magnolia tree and looked to be asking for his photo taking - so I did.
Once Woody departed I ventured outside to try my luck at photographing some snowdrops in close up. It didn’t take more than a few seconds to realise it wasn’t going to happen as the flower heads were blowing about too much in the gale force wind. After a few days when we thought our snowdrops were never going to come into flower they’re now almost fully out.
In a sudden calm spell, I did manage this close up of one of our hellebores.
The forecast for next week is for colder conditions to return so perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to loose the gale force winds of the weekend.