Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday 21-23 March 2016
Desirable One Bedroom Properties to Let
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were dull and cloudy continuing the current spell of dry weather. The temperature reached about expected for mid to late March but without the sunshine it didn’t feel very spring like.
At least on Tuesday I got our bird boxes cleaned out and ready for any new occupants this year.
Last year we had a pretty poor occupancy rate for our nest boxes. In total we have 2 sparrow terraces, like the one above, with apartments for 3 pairs of birds in each terrace. Then we have 2 single nest nest boxes with cameras. One is set up as a robin or possible blackbird box as it has the front removed.
This is our main box with a wired camera but so far over the couple of years we’ve had it it’s had no takers. Last year a couple of great tits deserted the box after a few weeks of spending nights roosting inside.
This was the only nest I found which was either made by a blue tit or great tit which had been built in the far end terrace of one of our sparrow boxes.
Of course the birds don’t always make use of the properties we make available for them. Last year we had a robin which nested somewhere to the back of our garage possibly making a nest in a camellia bush. A blackbird made a nest up in the courtyard garden in the ivy which grows on the fence.
I’m not sure whether I should have removed this old nest or not. I’ve left it in place incase someone fancies a renovation job. It would be good to get one of our camera boxes occupied this year.
Thursday and Good Friday 24-25 March 2016
Teasing Us!
Thursday continued the spell of dull and cloudy weather but Good Friday was the best day of the year so far. The temperature reached 15.3°C in the afternoon. With plenty of sunshine and a gentle breeze it was very pleasant. However, the forecast for the weekend is for unsettled weather with outbreaks of rain which means Good Friday’s weather was only a teaser to let us know how nice it can be in March.
Temperature and Sunshine Records 23-25 March 2016
The good weather on Friday allowed us to make a start on tidying up the plot and get some ground ready for planting our first crops in the next few weeks.
The first task was to get all our grass paths strimmed. At least with that done the plot looks a bit more cared for. I didn’t get all the bed edges trimmed as I forgot to take the edging tool down to the plot. These two beds might need digging over before planting. The top bed will be planted up with our early brassicas which, at the moment, are growing on in modules in the home greenhouse. The bed in the foreground is for our early potatoes.
I also managed to finish cutting down of our large conifer tree.
It’s made a large amount of debris though but much of it will be reused on the plot. It made three large trunks which are a bit like mini telegraph poles with kinks in them. Lots of the smaller side branches will make pea sticks leaving just green leaves to be left to rot down and use as a mulch on the blueberries.
Saturday, Easter Sunday and Monday 26-28 March 2016
Drying Out Well but Not Anymore!
After a superb Good Friday the weather behaved as forecast and the remainder of the holiday turned out to be pretty poor weather wise. Saturday and Sunday both seemed to be days waiting for the rain to arrive. On Saturday it was cloudy all day with rain in the air for most of the day but we didn’t get much heavy rain until around teatime. Sunday was sunnier but a blustery day with the treat of heavy showers through the day but once again they held off until the middle of the afternoon.
The heaviest of the rain was reserved for the early hours of Easter Monday with 15.4mm (0.61”) by mid morning.
The plot had been drying out nicely after a wet start to March but after the last few days it’s probably back to square one and a few days of decent weather are required to dry the ground out ready for digging and planting.
Tuesday & Wednesday 29/30 March 2016
Early April ?
The last couple of days have been rather mixed with a few sunny spells but lots of cloudier conditions. We certainly missed the worst of storm Katie just getting some heavy rain but without any gale force winds. We've had some heavy showers since then bringing our rainfall for March up to 78.6mm by early on Wednesday morning. That's made it by far the wettest March of the last few years for Ossett.
The plot may will be in need of a few good drying days before we get round to planting any potatoes and maybe our first couple of rows of peas.
This little patch of cyclamen have been in flower since late February and are still going strong.
It was bought one year ago on a visit to RHS Harlow Carr.
Thursday 31 March 2016
Web Site Problems
I thought I'd post something about updating our websites. As you may be aware from some comments Sue posted on Facebook, Serif software have decided that they will not be updating their web design software any more and so we have been on the lookout for alternative packages.
It looks like we will be changing from Serif WebPlus X8 to Adobe Muse.
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I'm expecting it will take us a while to become reasonably familiar with the new software. As a first step I've attempted to convert my existing websites from the old to new software. I've found that Adobe Muse is very poor at creating tables and as I make use of lots of them on my website it is going to take me a while to get to grips with the software and the best way to work around this issue.
Of course it's not only tables that are different as navigation menus, links and methods of formatting text are all different let alone the way images are imported.
All this is my way of saying that if you log onto one of our websites and find it isn't working properly please bear with us while we get to grips with our new software. Making sure that all the previous links work correctly and open up the desired web page is quite a challenge.
