T-Shirt Weather

dinosaw

dinosaw

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Just got in from spending half an hour out with the chickens, absolutely lovely day, blinding sun and warm enough for me to be in my T-Shirt!. The hawthorns and hazels are still holding their leaves and the only thing to signal that Christmas is only two months away was the first yellow berries appearing on my holly. I'm still taking tomatoes off the plants in the greenhouse.
 
Lets enjoy it whilst it lasts.Been to work at 4am in shirt sleeves all this week. The garden is still a riot of colour
 
Certainly has been mild. My holly has red berries on it all year round, I take it you can get different varieties?
 
Hedgehogs are still hoovering up food every night, putting on weight, I hope, before the big freeze. I just hope none of 'ours' are silly enough to try a third brood at this stage, but wouldn't bet on it.
 
Which planet are you on?
Here it has been day after day of driving rain. My sheep (and everyone else's) are looking dejectedly a cross a sea of oozing swamp, half of them are limping due to foot issues and the nearby freshwater loch has burst its banks and flooded the bairns football pitch.
But the most annoying aspect of all this is when you watch the weather forecast on TV and they announce that Scotland will have a dry sunny day even though their map clearly shows rain clouds over Shetland. Oh, have we left the UK and been ceded to Outer Mongolia? I must have missed that news item!
Seriously though we had a brilliant summer with endless long sunny days so I can't really complain, even if my sheep look at me with that kind of 'either do something or we're going to call the SSPCA' expression.
Tomorrow I'm going to be playing with pallets and fence posts creating Z-shaped windbreaks so they can at least find some shelter. My very informative crofting neighbour has also suggested that in conditions like this I really have to put aside my reluctance to use antibiotics and give them all a shot. My ram, who will be going to the ewes in 6 weeks time, is down on his knees while he grazes because his front feet are sore. Hard times call for radical solutions!
 
Hen-Gen said:
Which planet are you on?
Click to expand...

The only planet that counts, planet Home Counties ;p

bigjim said:
My holly has red berries on it all year round, I take it you can get different varieties?
Click to expand...

Just googled it and apparently there are around 600 varieties!. I'd never heard of them having berries all year round till today, thought they only got fruit in Autumn and Winter, always learning something new.
 
Starts cold here in the mornings at the moment- just 9C, but then rises rapidly to 26C yesterday and 28C forecast today, so Tee shirt and shorts. It takes a bit of getting used to, although the chickens seem to like it! No rain means the ground is like concrete so no digging, but I'm sure it will all change soon. We've had drought conditions for three years now with all the reservoirs nearly empty and crops failing. We have large areas of weeds and brambles which need to be dug out and then grass-seeded, but that's impossible now. We've been warned that the window for digging and planting here is very small, so all the equipment has to be ready and in good order as a breakdown spells disaster.

Apparently the temperatures are going to tumble over the next few days so perhaps our first log fire will be earlier than 5th November last year?
 
Very warm and dry here too :D but it's not out of the ordinary, I sometimes think Autumn is the best time here, not too hot but sunny and bright, right round to Xmas if we are lucky. The drought thing is new tho, it's been a terribly dry year with little rain in the winter and no September drenching for a week. We are having a fire, but that's for the benefit of guests, not ourselves, it's cosy.....and the chestnuts are for sale :D

I love hearing about our different lives and weathers, across maybe 1500 miles :D
 
Are you in Southern France as well, MrsBiscuit. Twenty years since I've been there (on a boys rock climbing week). To be honest I'm no lover of the heat but some dryness would be appreciated.
This place is a wintering ground for vast numbers of geese which fly in from Iceland for the mild climate. It's magnificent to see the skeins circling and wheeling and listen to their honking. Every time you walk over the fields you put up snipe that zig-zag away at high speed. And all the time the ravens quartering the landscape looking for the dead or the sick and dying on which to feast. And best of all, no more twitchers who are here most of September because someone has texted that a Lesser Spotted Tit Warbler has been seen (actually an Upland Sandpiper) which is another small brown thing but the first of its kind to be seen here having strayed from the USA.
Best of all though is the likely hood of the Northern Lights when the northern sky is a dancing display of green and blue. There is something very humbling about it and one feels close to God (if you subscribe to that belief system).
 
One of the things I liked about Alpacas was that they weren't prone to foot problems in the way that sheep are, having just a couple of pads with toenails (not unlike dogs in some ways) rather than hooves. Foot care for sheep seems like a bit of a never-ending battle talking to folks who keep them. Must be lovely to see the northern lights from your own home.

Have the fires died down now Mrs B?, heard there was a vote of confidence in parliament over them on Tuesday, was also reported here that you had some bad ones a couple of weeks ago. Are you returning to the UK for winter this year?.
 
Very dry here on planet Essex. Seriously though Hen-Gen continual wet weather is no good for the poor sheep, perhaps we should all make them little bootees.
Always thought it was strange that the weather people make no mention of Shetland or the Scillies. When they mention strong winds you never hear them say anything about the Isle of Man or Isle of Wight either
 
bigyetiman said:
Always thought it was strange that the weather people make no mention of Shetland or the Scillies. When they mention strong winds you never hear them say anything about the Isle of Man or Isle of Wight either
Click to expand...

That's political correctness for you, mentioning the Isle of Man would see them accused of sexism, mentioning the Isle of Wight would see them accused of racism and mentioning the Scillies would see them accused discriminating against sensible folk.

Yes I know, I can hear the groans from here.
 
And you would suppose that the Republic of Ireland is an imaginary country where the weather stops in a neat line across the border (except for a brief mention if affected by an occasional passing hurricane.)
 
I have friend who declared that there worst location to live was Places. Have you not heard that there is nearly always rain/heavy rain/frost/snow etc in Places? Very occasionally there will be sunny spells in Places, but it's generally bad weather.
 
That is very true, I wonder if Bill Posters lives there, as he is always being prosecuted, in various palces
 
i have an azalea the has been covered in glorious flower for the past 3 weeks, with more buds to come. The Viburnum Tinus has also been in flower since September. Both of these are supposed to flower in Spring to provide nectar for early insects. There are Red Admiral butterflies on the verbena and other late-flowering plants, and yesterday there was a queen bumblebee feeding as well - she should have hibernated by September at the latest.
 
Can't manage those exotics, Marigold, but we have hedgehogs shuffling about all year. They don't seem to hibernate here. Don't know what they eat all winter but when I see one it gets a bowl of cat food to tide it over. Not a strategy favoured by the birders - feeding an introduced species that eats birds eggs in the Spring - but there you go! :D
 
Hen-Gen, sorry for the delay in replying, I am in Central Portugal :D

Dinos- probably we will be back for Xmas and early Jan only this year, although that may change. We were away when the fires struck a week or two back. Mostly they were in the north, coming down from Spain and fanned by Ophelia. There were 42 deaths, it's just awful,but at least there was some partial natural explanation, rather than it being men or women setting the fires on purpose. There are all sorts of rumours here about why people do it, most are pure gossip. There is criticism of the civil protection services, but the terrain must be seen to be believed, everywhere is remote and mountainous and communication is hard. They are doing better at prevention now, everywhere there are men clearing undergrowth by roads to try to use them as barriers to stop fires jumping. Eucalyptus are also the villains of the piece, although, if there wasn't a single one you would still struggle to contain the rampage, there is so much scrub and dry pine or other leaf tinder, although eucalyptus does ignite and burn super fast. Having seen the carnage in California on TV, I can say we are ten times more fortunate than them. We don't lose habitation on anything like the same scale.

I can't remember the last time I saw a hedgehog, they seem to have disappeared from my Mum's garden in Hampshire and ours in Sussex. That and the fact I used to see murmurations of starlings across a field, but don't any longer, are my two personal indicators of environmental change. But, on the bright side, do you have red squirrels on Fetlar? My OH saw one here last week, for the first time. I know they are common in Spain, but we hadn't seen one in Portugal.

PS, I am a big fan of Mr Dali's art! I have enjoyed the exchanges!
 
Sorry not a fan of Dali's work.
Hedgehogs still snuffling about happily here, and 4 Clouded Yellow butterflies were a nice surprise. But woke to frost on lawn and car this morning
 
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