Endless London summer – EOMV 2016

It’s the last day of August, the last day of summer and autumn is officially starting tomorrow – but here in London the summer is far from over. We have had the best summer for years, once it finally got going, and the reminiscences of the unusually cold spring and early part of the summer is now a bleak memory. The good weather started on 16th July and today, nearly 7 weeks later I can look back on several short heatwaves with well over 30 degrees and the rest has been in the mid to high 20s. Last week we had 34 degrees a couple of days and for me that’s a bit too high, I am happier in the garden with around 25 degrees C. Despite having had some rain forecasted a couple of times we have only had proper rain once and it was a welcome 24 hours of rain – but that was back in July. Everything is really dry and the ghost of mildew is hovering over my garden, threatening to invade. So far I have managed to stay clear but all the watering is taking its toll. I wouldn’t mind 3-4 days of non-stop rain....

End of Month View – April 2016

It is a whole year since I moved house and garden – amazing how time is flying! I had 2 moving days, one day with my house content where the huge lorry drove one trip with all my things from the house - and one day where the same lorry drove TWICE with all the plants from my garden. In my book that’s just the right priority!

A slow approach - March -16, EOMV

We have just had another storm here, it’s become much easier to keep track of the storms since they started giving Atlantic storms names too, and with storm Katie just passed the total are now 11 this season. That’s more storms than usual - and Katie hit us hard here in the south-east, we are not used to proper storms. I am amazed though how sheltered my new garden is compared to just the front side of the house, and thanks to this I had no serious damage after storm Katie. But there were plenty of minor damage, and most of the daffodils that were in flower are now broken and I have taken those that could be rescued inside in vases so I at least get to enjoy them for a few days before they go off. There were camellia flowers ripped off in the high winds too and there were lots of overturned pots, but no serious damage. Next storm on the list is Lawrence and there are another 9 names after that again, ending with Wendy. Plenty of scope for more storms before the season is finished – I sincerely hope we won’t have to use the whole list this year!

EOMV February 2016

In some places around the world, spring lasts about a week, it is an explosion in nature, the snow melts in record time and suddenly everything is bursting out in green and colours everywhere. In London it is a rather drawn-out affair that lasts about....well, I would say it lasts about 6 months or so, since most years we don’t really get a winter to talk about. Autumn usually ends beginning of December and although it says winter on the calendar, it goes straight into spring mode with spring plants and bulbs emerging from there on. And the official spring starts from 1st March so now I can look back at what kind of ‘winter’ we had: no snow on the ground, and 10 minutes of a few flurries in the air one very late night. That was the snow. As for frost - one frost night in November and one in February where it dipped just barely below freezing in my garden. We might get another frost night next week, but it will probably be another one just barely below freezing, if at all. I realise that London is an exception, just a few miles from here it has been much colder and places like Oxford and Cambridge has had down to minus 7C many times this winter. The day temperature has been lower in February than in December and January, which was unusually mild. It all evens out in the end!

Hints of spring, EOMV January -16

It’s still stormy season on the British Isles and storm Gertrude has just passed whilst storm Henry is waiting in the wings and will land on us on Monday. Here in the relatively quiet corner of the South-East we are not so affected by bad weather in general and storms in particular and although it is windy every time we have a new storm, nothing has been damaged in my garden and I have had no flooding issues to worry about. But parts of my garden seem to have rather bad drainage and are now so soggy after all the rain that I try not to walk in those beds for now. Other parts of my garden, especially under the two tall ceanothus’ trees are still bone dry and will need to be watered as soon as I get some plants in the ground. When that will be is an open question....work has been slow the last month. It has been cold and wet and the number of days possible to work outside rather few and far between. Hopefully February will bring more good days – I don’t mind it being cold, that’s just a question of putting on the right type of clothes – it’s the rain I can’t cope with, getting wet makes me too cold. When it rains I am stuck inside watching my garden through my windows, just aching to get outside again.

Happy New Year from London!

On the list of the most stressful things people do in their life, moving house and staying in hospital come quite high up. I had two hospital stays and moved house and garden, all in the space of 6 months between April and October 2015. I can confirm it really is stressful! I am still not finished in the house, but I finally got kitchen curtains up a week before Christmas, after having been here in my new house for 7 months. The garden will take a lot more time and I have no idea when the last plant will be planted in the ground – it’s just going to take as long as it takes. But I am happy I moved and the new house is much more suitable for me as it is a bungalow so no more stairs to climb and no stairs out to the garden.

EOMV– from a stormy London

November has already had 2 storms here and a lot of bad weather, and UK is now gearing up for a third storm, apparently a really bad one, named Clodagh. First came Abigail and Barney, then we had frost for the first time in....I can’t remember how long ago....2 years? 3 years, perhaps more? To be honest, I can’t remember a frost this early ever before. All my dahlias just blackened and went to mush from one day to the next. I can’t remember that happen ever, if we have had frost it has usually been much later, more like February. Clodagh has already arrived on the west coast, and is said to bring strong winds, rain and snow, here in London it’s just been windy today and I don’t think it will make much impact here, certainly not in my sheltered garden. And there won’t be any snow, the forecast is for 10-14 degrees C at daytime and 5-11 at night. But the wind is bad enough to make gardening a rather chilly experience.

EOMV – London in October sunshine

This year seems to have flown away faster than any year – I know I keep saying time flies and that’s apparently part and parcel of getting older, but my goodness, someone must have given anabolic steroids or something similar to whatever keeps track of the seasons for us this year as I can’t ever remember it going this quickly before. I suppose some of it has to do with me moving house and everything that came with it before, during and after moving, but even so....even so! Only consolation I suppose is that I can hope the winter will pass just as quickly. I’ll be fine as long as I can find time to plant my almost 600 potted plants from my previous garden - and....erhm....a few hundred new bulbs that somehow managed to turn up despite that I had promised myself not to buy anything until I had planted everything I already had. Funny how that could happen. But hey, even though winter starts in 4 weeks, the first hellebore will start to flower in 2 months’ time in my garden, and it’s only 3-4 months till my garden will be filled with snowdrops, crocuses, Iris reticularis and other spring flowers. I know many people use the astronomical calendar to determine seasons, but for the London climate, the meteorological seasons fits better in terms of when spring and summer starts so I use it. This week we have had more of a whiff of summer again than late autumn, with temperatures up to 19-20 degrees C even though it’s rather cold at night with 10-12 degrees C.

Summer isn’t over yet – EOMV September

August and September has been 2 months of the best and worst of British weather, right now we are in a settled, good spell and it is said to last for a while. Can’t really talk about an Indian summer yet as we need to be in October or November to call it that, but whatever you call it, I enjoy the nice sunny weather and temperatures around 20 degrees during the day – despite the need for watering my numerous pots in such good weather.

EOMV – August in London

It’s the last week of the summer and over here in Britain we have Bank Holiday week-end and a Carnival to celebrate what was supposed to be a glorious summer now about to end. Well, here in London we have had an amazing June and first half of July, but August has been a month of contrasts as big as they come. A week ago we had what’s called a ‘Spanish Plume’, really hot air coming up from the continent and giving us a nice week-end of summer weather. I had 34 degrees C on the Saturday and 29 C on the Sunday in my garden. On the Monday the Spanish Plume had gone to pastures new and the temperature was a measly 16 degrees. Cold! All that was a week ago, this week-end is the big carnival do in Notting Hill, people are scantily dressed and dependant on warm, sunny weather. I have been to the Notting Hill Carnival a few times many years ago, these days I prefer my own garden for colour and drama! Sorry to say the weather was typical British Summer for all party goers this week-end, cold and cloudy yesterday, cold and raining pretty much all day today.

EOMV – July - blowing hot and cold

July 2015 has been a month of contrast in my garden in terms of the weather. From extreme hot weather in the beginning to seriously cold towards the end of the month. Well, it’s not as if we have had any snow, but it actually dipped just below 10 degrees C one night and that’s rather cold for July in London. Spare a thought for those further north though, who had temperatures down towards zero that night. Brrr! And a week ago we had 24 hours with rain. Yay!! That was really good for parched gardens around here, would have liked to have a few more days like that, but according to most forecasts there won’t be a drop of rain the next 10 days. I am back to watering every evening.

EOMV – June, the joys of a new garden #2

It is hot in London, it’s been nice weather for some time but now it’s really stepping up a gear. With 30-35 degrees C in my garden and no substantial rain for months I am struggling to keep all my potted plants alive, all 700 of them. Well there were nearly 700 to begin with, I am afraid some have died due to vine weevils, some have died due to lack of water and some have actually got too much water and drowned. I can’t possibly go around and stick my finger into each and every pot before applying water to check if it needs water or not, I just hose them down and hope for the best - every evening. It is a relentless work and I am determined to get as many as possible through the summer. But a few more will probably die.

End of Month View - May

What a mad last couple of months I have had! When I was offered the bungalow back in February I realised it would take time to sort out everything and get a final approval for a swap, but I did of course not plan on dislocating my hip replacement in the middle of the whole process – neither did I think the house swap application would take such a long time as it actually did, and the nail-biting finish with a deadline approaching and a final yes from the council a day after the deadline was a bit more than I appreciated. But I am here, I have lived in my new house – and garden for almost 3 weeks – and I am hopefully NEVER going to move again!

End of Month View – April

This will probably be my last ever post from this garden, I have today got a YES to my application for a house swap, only per email but I have been told I can sign contract on Wednesday and that means I will be moving on Monday the 11th May. It has been a very frustrating process all this waiting around not knowing if I was going to move or not, not sure if I should start packing or not - and more so because I have just come out of hospital after dislocating my hip replacement again and all I should really do is to rest and take it easy. I have spent the last 6 days taking phone calls and writing emails chasing people just to get answers and decisions. It seems like the trend in offices now is that no one answers their phones. All I get is an answer phone and no one seems that bothered about ringing back when I leave a message. Sending emails isn’t much better, I have tried for a month to find out if the rent at the new property is charged in advance or in arrears, kind of vital as I would have to come up with one month’s rent money I don’t have if it was charged in advance as my current rent is charged in arrears. After a whole month’s chase I finally have the answer, I don’t have to find the money for the rent – housing benefit is paid directly. Phew.

End of Month View – March

Last month I showed you the new rose bed, all the changes I had done and everything I had planned for this bed. Today, a month later, every plan has been thrown out of the window and my whole garden looks very different. I am hoping to move house soon! I still haven’t got a final decision and it might be another whole month until I know for sure, but I have to plan for a move and hope for the best, because once I get a decision, things will have to happen fast.

End of Month View – February

It’s been nice and spring like the last week here in London, a bit cold at night but really good at 10-12 degrees C (53 F) during the day. And we have had some good sunshine too, I always long for some sun when we get to this time of year. Still no snow in my garden, last time I had snow was February 2013 so I really hope Mr Winter doesn’t bite back with some silliness like a snowfall in March. It has happened before, and although snow and frost in March is rare and never long-lived, it is detrimental to my lovely huge camellia so thanks, but no thanks. No snow this year either please.

End of Month View – January

Where did January go?? It is usually a month that feels very long, but the last few weeks have flown away for me. It has been rather cold here in London, much, much colder than last January, but it was unusually mild last year and statistically we won’t have it like that every year – sadly! This January the temperatures have been between 2-8 degrees C, with a biting cold wind for most of the time. So far I have not seen a single snow flurry and including last month I have had only 4 nights where it dipped below freezing, but just barely below - at the bottom of my garden. I have an indoor weather station that measures the temperatures 2 places in my garden and up at the backdoor where my nursery shelves are there still hasn’t been any frost at all according to my thermometers. The minimum temp recorded there so far this winter was 0.5 C, last week.

End of Month View - December

It’s the last day of December and the last day of 2014 – time for a bit of reminiscence about the past year and also previous years. Today I have been blogging for exactly 4 years and written 292 posts. What started as something I was a bit curious about has turned in to a nice hobby I am certain I will keep doing in the future. I am not the most frequent blogger, however whenever I do write a post I usually write really, REALLY long posts with lots of photos. I kind of put blogging to one side and do lots of other things between each post, but then I realise so much has happened in my garden since last post – and I want to show you as much as possible, and I end up with very long posts each time. Sorry if you are the type of blog reader that prefer one-liners and just one photo, not much of that around here!

End of Month View – November

It’s the last day of November, I made my movie yesterday, and just like last month we had an absolutely glorious end to the month. It was more like a nice spring day, with 14 degrees C and nice sunshine. It has rained a lot this month, but November is the rainy month of the year in my area so that’s just normal. I have had no frost in my garden so far, actually nowhere near frost, not even at night, and even though we are expecting some colder nights next week it will not get low enough to hit frost. 

End of Month View – October

Today was the last day of October, and what a day it was! Glorious sunshine and 23 degrees C – that was the temperature officially for London, in my garden it tipped slightly higher in the afternoon. Not a bad way to end October. The next few days the temperature is going to drop around 10 degrees. We will certainly notice that! I am sure today’s summerlike weather must have broken yet another weather record, but who’s counting, we seem to have broken one weather record after the other the last few years, weather records somehow seem to have gone out of fashion. Who cares, it was amazing today!