Six on Saturday: a Bit of Weather

I treated myself to a new weather monitor this week, the previous one which I have had for over 10 years having begun to be less reliable, especially in terms of rainfall. Like most gardeners, I have always taken a particular interest in the weather – not just rainfall and minimum overnight temperatures in winter but the whole caboodle – and as a Geography graduate I am sure there was a brief period during the course of my degree (no doubt when studying climatology!) when I considered weather forecasting as a career.

I dithered a little over the type to purchase but in the end went for one that linked to the internet and kept ongoing records – unlike my previous ones it has a colour display which gives a more graphic presentation and more details of the current conditions. It was relatively easy to set up although I still need to tweak the pressure data in line with our location. We did not had any snow today, unlike earlier forecasts, but the wind cups and wind vane have been kept busy as there has been a chilly breeze for much of the day – and we haven’t really had 29mm of rain…this was the result of the unit being repeatedly turned upside down whilst being fitted!

I braved the chilliness to try and get a picture that truly represented the wonderful glow of the group of witch hazels in front of the bright stemmed cornus – sadly, you will just have to take my word for it as a photo just doesn’t do them justice, but the varying shades of the former really do reflect the vibrant shades of the cornus to perfection:

A photo does do reasonable justice to the nearby witch hazel Hamamelis ‘Zuccariniana’, however, now in almost full flower with ‘Ruby Glow’ behind:

In passing, I noticed some half-hearted Crocus tommasinianus in the streamside grass (and I use the word ‘grass’ loosely, as it appears there is far less grass and far more moss and other green stuff these days) – with their grass-like foliage it is easy to miss their gradual emergence until the flowers appear, so I am sure there will be more just a little way behind these relatively early ones:

Wordless Wednesday featured some potted narcissi in bud in the Coop, and here we have some hyacinth which are also progressing nicely. Judging when to bring forced hyacinths into the light can be difficult, but it looks as if I got it right with this lot. The adjacent ‘Blue Star’ ones are not looking as promising, with some bulbs not showing flower buds yet and one sadly going rotten:

I moved my first batch of winter-sown sweet peas down to the working greenhouse today, some of them looking a little lankier than I would have liked, the downside of sowing two different varieties in the same set of root trainers. Hopefully the other variety will still germinate in the much colder conditions.

Sowing a batch of a mixed variety yesterday, I spontaneously hit upon a way of filling the root trainers without making as much mess as usual – the end of a plastic milk bottle makes a funnel that fits perfectly inside each unit!

That makes about Six things on Saturday, so I shall finish by thanking our host Jon the Propagator and suggesting you visit his blog to find links to other Saturday Sixes.