Wednesday 6th January, 2016
Our recent weather has been weird. It still feels more like autumn than winter on the Island but in sunnier and warmer areas of the British Isles there have been reports of daffodils flowering before Christmas and new leaves appearing on trees before the old ones have finished falling. Someone said that it seemed as though there had been no winter . . . they had gone straight from autumn into spring. Another correspondent reported that their snowdrops had finished flowering already. Our snowdrops have barely started. It may be that the lack of sunshine in our area has counteracted the warmer than normal weather. We do have the first buds on our snowdrops but this patch appear to be opening very slightly later than last winter as the buds are all still upright.
2nd January 2016
1st January 2015
I walked around the garden a couple of days ago during a brief dry period and found a few tatty primroses that had been nibbled by hungry woodlice or earwigs, and also some early violets that are not looking their best. Nothing is looking its best. Flowers which haven’t been nibbled have been beaten by the rain and gales.
The little pale cyclamen that was covered in blossom when I bought last February has survived under the big apple tree. I thought it might have been manipulated to flower in early spring and I may have been right but I am not certain. After I planted it in the garden, it flowered again in autumn. But it still has a few flowers so it does continue flowering later than our pink c hederifolium
As well as the tatty early spring flowers, we have some tatty late summer ones. There seldom seems to be a period when at least one Welsh poppy isn’t braving the weather.
As well as the snowdrops, there are also a few other plants that normally flower at this time of year. The winter jasmine refused to flower up by the summerhouse but has produced flowers every year after being moved down to the terraces at the south west end of the house . . .
. . . and the stinking helebore (Helleborus foetidus). It was originally growing outside the laundry window but has spread to the bottom of the garden and come up in some unusual places. This one is growing under a spiraea and there are even a couple of plants under the leylandii hedge. According to Wikipedia, the seeds are popular with rodents. So the usual suspects, the birds, may not be responsible for spreading the seed.
There really isn't much to write about apart from the weather. The media is full of weather related records - record high temperatures for December and record rainfall and floods in many parts of the British Isles. I only started recording our rainfall in September 2014 so my results are not very significant - but December 2015, with a grand (?) total of 369 mm/14.53 ins, easily beat the previous record-holder - October 2014. This was no mean feat as October 2014 was the second wettest October on record according to the Met Office at Ronaldsway. I was amused by this quote. Do you think the professor was implying that the weather has been taking steroids? “Climate change has fundamentally changed the UK weather, said Prof Myles Allen, at the University of Oxford: “Normal weather, unchanged over generations, is a thing of the past. You are not meant to beat records by those margins and if you do so, just like in athletics, it is a sign something has changed.”
But climate change is a serious subject. I doubt whether anyone with a scientific background claims to know the whole truth. It is interesting that the scientists can’t even agree on climate change in the past, such as the events that triggered the ice ages. “Although the exact causes for ice ages, and the glacial cycles within them, have not been proven, they are most likely the result of a complicated dynamic interaction between such things as solar output, distance of the Earth from the sun, position and height of the continents, ocean circulation, and the composition of the atmosphere.” So any current climate change is probably also a result of a combination of events and it isn’t easy to establish how the burning of fossil fuels fits into the whole equation and whether it is even a major player. But, as a totally unscientific onlooker, it seems to me that the pollution that we cause is very important because it is the only part of the equation that we can influence.
We have been lucky on the Island. After the flash floods on December 3rd, all the worst of the rain has bypassed us. Surrounding countries and counties . . . Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire have had torrential rain and floods while we have only had a few minor problems with water on some roads.
We only found out that our little road had been damaged in the December 3rd flood when we received a letter from the Lezayre Parish Commissioners on the 15th which informed us that the U14 Glen Auldyn Back Road was closed until the repair of the washed out section had been completed. We weren’t aware of the problem because it is further up the glen from our home. We walked up the road to inspect the damage. There were two sections where the edge of the tarred road had been undermined. Repair work had already started.
Further up, part of the gravel road just beyond the end of the tarred road had been completely washed away and a short detour had been constructed.
We returned just before Christmas with our son to inspect the repairs.
And when we walked along the road again at the end of December there was more weather damage. This time a tall conifer had been damaged by the gales and was being removed.
But all is not doom and gloom. There was blue sky and sunshine this morning. Unfortunately it only lasted for about five minutes but I had time to record the unusual event.
And finally . . . battered and bruised but still standing . . . this is the winner of the trophy for the last rose of 2015 . . . and also the winner for the trophy for the first rose of 2016!
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