It’s been a mild start to November so far but it looks like we’re in for a few colder days starting today. Overnight and into the early hours of this morning the temperature fell to -0.5°C (31.1°F) giving us our first frost of autumn. It’s not warmed up at all and, as I’m writing this blog at 13:00, the temperature has only managed to reach 3.9°C (39.0°F) and it’s just beginning to rain.

I’d normally expect to see a bright sunny morning after a cold and frosty night but that wasn’t the case and the morning has been dull and murky.

It was cold enough for the birdbath to have a thin coating of ice. A drop of warm water soon thawed it out to enable the birds to have a drink.

The frost may well have blackened the dahlias at the allotment. They’ve given up any pretence of flowering but the foliage was still green.

Whether or not the foliage has been frosted, I really do need to cut the dahlias back and lift the tubers and move them into the greenhouse for winter. In the greenhouse, I’ll cover them with some old sacking and environmesh to hopefully keep the worst of the cold weather at bay. When that will happen I’m not sure as the forecast for the rest of the week is for spells of wet and windy weather to cross the country although the suggestion is that it will turn milder from mid week onwards.