Winter finally arrived last night! I don't know how cold it got as the
thermometer's decided to rise to and stick at 28 degrees C, but it was
enough to freeze the top quarter-inch of the bird bath and a very thin
layer on a water feature. Not enough to do anything to the pond
though.

But now quite a bright day and not overly cold.

Just need to write to Santa to ask for a new garden thermometer.

Noticed a couple of small groups of ladybirds hibernating in the
Christmas tree yesterday, clearly undisturbed by the process of
decorating it. Maybe it'll just have to stay there and decorated until
the spring!

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling (after the first frost) from
the dryer (east) end of Swansea Bay.

On Dec 10, 1:04*pm, Jake Nospam@invalid wrote:
Winter finally arrived last night! I don't know how cold it got as the
thermometer's decided to rise to and stick at 28 degrees C, but it was
enough to freeze the top quarter-inch of the bird bath and a very thin
layer on a water feature. Not enough to do anything to the pond
though.

But now quite a bright day and not overly cold.

Just need to write to Santa to ask for a new garden thermometer.

Noticed a couple of small groups of ladybirds hibernating in the
Christmas tree yesterday, clearly undisturbed by the process of
decorating it. Maybe it'll just have to stay there and decorated until
the spring!

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling (after the first frost) from
the dryer (east) end of Swansea Bay.

At the other end of Swansea Bay we had the temp down to 30f by my old
mercury thermometer, the grass was white this morning and out the
field there were a few shards of ice in the water filled footprints,
The foliage on the dahlias being grown for pot tubers has been caught
but some of the regrowth on some of the tree dahlias that's around 4
ft off the ground is untouched.
I have around 1000 pots to bring in and it's made difficult by the
ground being so wet I can't use the tractor and trailor, I have to box
them and then haul them in on a sack truck, about 75 at the time.
I am finding masses of slug eggs on the underside of the pots,
thousands of the things.
Anyone want some slug caviar?
The D. Imperialis are looking very battered from the gales so it will
be a few days before I know if they wiill cary on flowering for Xmas,
but I suspect the storms forecast for the start of next week will
decide their fate.
David

On 12/10/2011 02:04 PM, Jake wrote:
Winter finally arrived last night! I don't know how cold it got as the
thermometer's decided to rise to and stick at 28 degrees C, but it was
enough to freeze the top quarter-inch of the bird bath and a very thin
layer on a water feature. Not enough to do anything to the pond
though.

But now quite a bright day and not overly cold.

Just need to write to Santa to ask for a new garden thermometer.

Noticed a couple of small groups of ladybirds hibernating in the
Christmas tree yesterday, clearly undisturbed by the process of
decorating it. Maybe it'll just have to stay there and decorated until
the spring!


First frost here in Basse-Normandie this morning. Amazing it's held off
this long... No ice though! The sub-tropical maples are mostly still
all in full leaf, rare for mid-December. After I finish a cuppa it's
time to do some final repotting and get the tender stuff safe under the
tunnel.

cheers, and good on you getting the tree up. We'll get ours next WE
hopefully.

-E

"Jake" wrote

Winter finally arrived last night! I don't know how cold it got as the
thermometer's decided to rise to and stick at 28 degrees C, but it was
enough to freeze the top quarter-inch of the bird bath and a very thin
layer on a water feature. Not enough to do anything to the pond
though.

But now quite a bright day and not overly cold.

Just need to write to Santa to ask for a new garden thermometer.

Noticed a couple of small groups of ladybirds hibernating in the
Christmas tree yesterday, clearly undisturbed by the process of
decorating it. Maybe it'll just have to stay there and decorated until
the spring!


Our large Arum Lily was about to start flowering again and this morning it
was well and truly drooping. This evening it's bold upright and looking none
the worse for wear. Most unusual as normally one bit of frost and it's mush.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK

In article , Sacha
writes
No frost here yet but at 5.30 this morning it was 3C here and -1C a few


Good Lord, what on earth are you doing up at that hour? I had only been
in bed for 2 or 3 hours at that time and certainly wasn't about to go
wandering up the road to check the frost
--
Janet Tweedy
Dalmatian Telegraph
http://www.lancedal.demon.co.uk

On Dec 10, 4:15*pm, "Bob Hobden" wrote:
"Jake" *wrote





Winter finally arrived last night! I don't know how cold it got as the
thermometer's decided to rise to and stick at 28 degrees C, but it was
enough to freeze the top quarter-inch of the bird bath and a very thin
layer on a water feature. Not enough to do anything to the pond
though.

But now quite a bright day and not overly cold.

Just need to write to Santa to ask for a new garden thermometer.

Noticed a couple of small groups of ladybirds hibernating in the
Christmas tree yesterday, clearly undisturbed by the process of
decorating it. Maybe it'll just have to stay there and decorated until
the spring!

Our large Arum Lily was about to start flowering again and this morning it
was well and truly drooping. This evening it's bold upright and looking none
the worse for wear. Most unusual as normally one bit of frost and it's mush.
--
Regards. Bob Hobden.
Posted to this Newsgroup from the W of London, UK- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Well that's it for another day, brought in 33+ pot dahlias, and
amongst them was a young fuchsia, with smallish flkower buds, no sign
of frost dannage on it, so the dahlia stems must have been enouigh to
protect it.

Sacha, you said "at 5.30 this morning it was 3C here and -1C a few
miles up the road".
What I want to know is ................
What were you doing out and about at that time with a thermometer?
David

On Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:47:50 +0100, Emery Davis
wrote:


cheers, and good on you getting the tree up. We'll get ours next WE
hopefully.

The tree appears earlier each year for some reason - it's always
linked to a family birthday and I've worked out that if the
procurement date advances again next year, the next birthday is mine
in May!

We've managed to move the tree (fully decorated) to the conservatory
today, having found more little groups of ladybirds. It'll be cooler
there so we hope they won't wake up. We can also leave the tree there
for as long as we like and it'll be easy to vacuum up any fallen
"spikes". We're actually grateful to the little critters as the tree
looks a lot better where it is now and we've decided that'll be the
place from now on.

The ladybugs have survived the trip from grower to house as we got the
tree fresh - the supply had arrived in the morning and we collected
the tree in the afternoon. It then came home in the car and simply
went through a trunk-sawing operation in the garage before being
placed in situ to settle down so no opportunity for squatting in
between!

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling (after the first frost) from
the dryer (east) end of Swansea Bay.

Can you get them nowadays? - good ones, that is?

We have one of the old ones with a metal "float" on top of each column, that you pull back down with a magnet when you want to reset. That works brilliantly.

Nowadays the equivalent ones have a press button to allow the "float" to come back down, and that doesn't work so well. Added to which, the last one we got, when unwrapped, proved to have 1/2inch freedom to move relative to the scale. I object to paying for a thermometer than having to calibrate it myself!

So are there any available which work reasonably well?

We had something like our 4th frost last night. Then a pretty drive down to Halifax to see the York Waits, with snow on the tops. Interesting to see in Halifax, alongside the Viburnum tinus and Verbena bonarensis some clumps of day lilies, all in full flower but of course, badly frosted.

On Dec 10, 6:37*pm, Jake Nospam@invalid wrote:
On Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:47:50 +0100, Emery Davis

wrote:
cheers, and good on you getting the tree up. *We'll get ours next WE
hopefully.

The tree appears earlier each year for some reason - it's always
linked to a family birthday and I've worked out that if the
procurement date advances again next year, the next birthday is mine
in May!

We've managed to move the tree (fully decorated) to the conservatory
today, having found more little groups of ladybirds. It'll be cooler
there so we hope they won't wake up. We can also leave the tree there
for as long as we like and it'll be easy to vacuum up any fallen
"spikes". We're actually grateful to the little critters as the tree
looks a lot better where it is now and we've decided that'll be the
place from now on.

The ladybugs have survived the trip from grower to house as we got the
tree fresh - the supply had arrived in the morning and we collected
the tree in the afternoon. It then came home in the car and simply
went through a trunk-sawing operation in the garage before being
placed in situ to settle down so no opportunity for squatting in
between!

Cheers, Jake
=======================================
Urgling (after the first frost) from
the dryer (east) end of Swansea Bay.

Now you just want to put a little silver and gold glitter on their
backs and you have extra decorations.

In article , Sacha
writes
And what were *you* doing going to bed at 2.30, or whatever it was?!!
Partying, eh?!
--


Oh I never go to bed much before, not sure why, just never get round to
it
--
Janet Tweedy
Dalmatian Telegraph
http://www.lancedal.demon.co.uk