A Real Storm

After a couple of not bad days on Tuesday and Wednesday the forecasted storm has arrived on Thursday morning. By 10:00am we’ve not had much rain but the wind has been gale force. At 06:30 my weather station recorded a new highest wind gust speed of 37mph breaking the previous record of 36mph set on 04 February 2011. I’ve noticed gusts of 80mph recorded in the Pennine areas of Yorkshire.

The strongest winds were forecast from mid morning to mid afternoon but at the moment the strength has eased a little through the morning. 

So far we've escaped any damage although we awoke to everyone else’s rubbish in our front garden.

The Council’s refuse collection system isn't up to much on a windy day. Today was collection day for paper, glass and plastic so crates were placed out last night ready for this morning’s collection. As a result paper and plastic is littered all over the street - this is supposed to be to improve the environment? I don’t think so. The Council know that this happens and do nothing at all about it.

I've now collected all the rubbish and bagged it ready for collection in two week’s time. This is the easy bit, the black plastic bag that has wrapped itself around our Magnolia tree will be a little bit more difficult to sort out.

This looks like it’s full of rubbish. The bags tend to rip apart as they’re disentangled from the branches so I'm assuming I’ll have all on to stop the contents falling out all over the garden.

It’s so annoying when a suitable refuse collection system should avoid all this - especially if the idea is to save the planet!

Update:
No sooner had I hit the publish button when a new record wind gust speed of 42mph was recorded. Perhaps the worst isn't over just yet.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

An Indoor Sort of Day

Monday was fairly mild but very dull all day. It wasn't the sort of day to be tempted outside so our order for replacement raspberry canes was sorted out. We are going to try two varieties. The first variety is Glen Ample one we've grown before and we've liked and the other is called Tulameen. It’s a mid to late season raspberry with dark pink fruits described as deliciously sweet. We will see. The plants will be coming bare rooted in the next couple of weeks.

Once the new raspberries canes were sorted out and ordered online it was time to get on and make that apple pie.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

Golden Delicious

Sunday got December off to a mild and sunny start. The sunshine only lasted to late morning when it clouded over. The temperature managed 10.7°C in the afternoon which is above average for December. It seems we’re due a short sharp blast of cold weather at the end of the week which I suppose is to be expected as it is winter after all.

These Golden Delicious apples have been stored in the spare fridge in the garage since they were picked at the beginning of October. They've stayed in good condition without any losses. I'm planning an apple pie for this batch. 

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

End to an Average November

Friday was dull and windy with a little bit of rain. Saturday finished off the month with a day of sunny spells with the wind easing down considerably.

November for us has been pretty average weather wise. We've had a few light frosts, but nothing very serious, mixed in with a few lovely mild sunny days. It’s been drier than we might expect with 38.6mm of rainfall about 50% of what we might expect.

By the end of the month the average monthly temperatures for 2012 and 2013 were exactly the same at 6.7°C but this year the start of the month was much milder than last year cooling off later in the month. In 2012 we started off with a cold snap at the beginning of the month with milder temperatures following on.

In our front border we still have some colour. This self seeded antirrhinum is still flowering its socks off unaffected by any of the light frosts. Around the back of the house which is more shady through autumn and winter it’s a slightly different story.

Our banana and gunnera leaves have certainly been caught by the frosts and are looking a little bit worse for wear. They’ll just finish up turning really brown once we get our first hard frost.

Our Acer which looked like this a couple of weeks ago

Now looks like this

As we move into December winter proper begins although I think that January and February are always the coldest of the winter months. Time to browse the seed catalogues and sort out what goodies to buy for next year.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

Good Value

Thursday continued the mild spell of weather. It was another day where the day’s high temperature just made it into double figures reaching 10.3°C. The downside of the mild conditions is that the days are dull and drab without any signs of sunshine.

Our next door neighbour’s summer bedding geraniums are still going strong and seemed to have coped well with the couple of nights of below zero temperatures we've had to date.

Planted close to the house wall and beneath a bay window they’re getting a little bit of extra protection from the weather but certainly providing good value when summer bedding is still flowering at the end of November.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

Cleaning Out the Nest Boxes

It was on the 27 November 2010 that the very cold winter of that year began with a minimum temperature down to -4.4°C and -7.6°C the following day. No such problems this year as Wednesday turned out to be a mild cloudy day with a maximum temperature of 11.3°C.

Whilst we didn't get any birds nesting in our camera boxes last spring we thought we had blue tits or great tits nesting in our sparrow terraces. As it was such a mild day I decided to clean out the boxes ready for some new residents in spring.

Nest box one, the top picture looks like some birds began building but changed their minds and nest box two looks like it was used to rear some young with a fully formed nest in the end terrace. Amazingly, even though the nest box is fixed to the house wall about 3.0m from the ground it looks like a slug or snail had slimed inside the nest box.

Both boxes were given a good brush out before they were replaced ready for some eager birds to take up residence next year. Preferably we’d like them to choose one of our nest boxes rigged up with a camera but although we know some birds checked out one of the camera boxes last year they preferred to build elsewhere. Perhaps we’ll be lucky next year.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

A Lovely Day for Walking the Dog

Tuesday was a lovely day for the end of November. Plenty of sunshine, no wind and the temperature up to 8.3°C in the afternoon but to be honest it felt as if it was milder than that.

We decided on a walk in the afternoon as the weather was so nice and made a trip to Temple Newsam. We decided to collect Tivvy on the way there and give her a nice afternoon walk too. There’s plenty of tarmac paths around the grounds so she doesn't get too dirty on her walk.

From a distance there still seems to be plenty of leaves left on the trees but on closer inspection it’s not the case and most of the leaves have fallen off onto the grass.

The park still looked very colourful though as we made our way around the main lake towards the walled garden. Inside the walled garden the gardeners were busy giving the grass one last cut before winter eventually sets in.

As for Tivvy this was very much her, “Why have we stopped?” look as I managed a quick snap. The only downside was the number of dog owners who don’t keep their pet on a lead but insist that it’s perfectly well behaved and under total control as their pet hurtles towards another dog completely oblivious of their owner shouting them to stop or come here. Of course there’s the wonderful comment he/she  is very playful and won’t hurt you as though I'm (or Tivvy’s) a sort of mind reader as their dog heads towards us at full tilt.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett

Someone Has To Do It

After a dull morning, Monday afternoon turned out to be bright, sunny and cold.

On the plot, I decided it was time to sort out one of our compost heaps. The one I intended to sort out was one of the bins where we had dumped all our weed growth from the last year or so.

I converted this:

Into this:

I confess that there doesn't seem to be a great deal of difference between the before and after picture. The top of the heap was moved into the adjacent bin to get to any decent compost that had formed at the bottom of the compost pile. Sure enough at the bottom of the pile was a good fork’s depth of good compost.

I dug out 15 barrowful's of good well rotted compost and moved it to various parts of the plot to be spread out and left over winter for the worms to incorporate.

My plan now is to repeat the process with the adjacent bin. I'm hoping all the partially decomposed material will all fit in one bin leaving an empty bin for all next year’s weeds. 

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett