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weather: april 2004

Bath weather station

Week beginning 1st April - The first day of April starts dry and mild, but ends with heavy rain. Then follows 48 hours of cooler, windier weather with some very light rain. Saturday , the 3rd, is windy, and then it throws it down in the evening. Sunday is a mixture of sun and heavy showers. Monday is very cold with a gusty, lunatic wind. Awful. Tuesday has heavy showers. Gradually the winds die down and there is more sun and fewer showers. It warms up a bit.

Week beginning 8th April - Cloudy with some sun, some drizzle on the 8th. The 9th, Good Friday, is beautiful after overnight frost. Saturday starts with light rain, sunday has more sun and monday is much the same, and maybe a bit warmer. By tuesday, warm , sunny weather has set in. very warm, and looks settled. Wednesday is beautiful.

Week beginning 15th April - Getting cooler and cloudier. Some light rain friday morning then heavier rain overnight. The rest of the weekend is wet and cold. Monday and tuesday are chilly, and wednesday has heavy rain.

Week beginning 22nd April - Drier and sunnier - by saturday the 24th it's as warm as a June day. Sunday is the same, monday too but hazy, then on monday it gets cooler and cloudier. Torrential rain up north, but nothing here. By wednesday lunchtime we get light rain which gets heavy early evening. The last two days are more of the same - damp, steady light rain, and cold. A far cry form last year.

 

 

 

 

the garden diary: april 2004

rog's garden diary page This diary is simply my record of what I did in the garden and why. Maybe at the end of this year I will find it useful to read back through the diary.
I like to think I write in the spirit of the old gentlemen amateurs.
Perhaps, if I should happen to keep this going for many years (and this is very unlikely), the diary will serve some obscure function as the documentary record of how a gardening novice learned about the subject and developed his garden(s).

april 2004

Friday 30th april 2004 : evening

So, April ends cold and damp, and it looks set to remain like this for a few more days.

Wednesday 28th april 2004 : evening

I find myself 'weather watching' so much at the moment, that I have written a page about this.
This week has been a very mixed one weather-wise. It started dry and warm, but as I write it is cold and dark. There are spits of rain. We've had heavier rain this afternoon, but nothing on the scale that other parts of England have had. At the moment it looks like the coming long weekend will be unsettled, so not great for gardening.

Sunday 25th april 2004 : morning

Weather wise we have had everything this week. Last sunday it rained all day, then it was cold for a couple of days before we had some heavy rain on wednesday. By thursday things were warming up and friday and yesterday were beautiful, warm sunny days. Today looks like being another warm one although there is more cloud around.
The rain followed by sun has, of course, caused a spurt of growth in the garden. I spent yesterday morning taking stock of changes. I've been taking more photos too, as this web site needs them.

..weeds..
The down side of the new growth has been the first significant flush of weeds. I've spotted the first sproutings of bindweed, a weed that has to be removed on an almost daily basis. There is an equally pernicious weed that is drifting into my garden this year, this 'thing' with a thick, pink root that firmly entrenches itself into the soil. This seems to be creeping in from next doors garden, which is wildly overgrown and untended. On that side of my garden I erected bamboo screens, with a gap at the bottom; it is through this gap that the neighbours' ivy and weeds are slowly invading my patch. Yesterday I took some preventative measures, blocking the gap with old bits of featheredge wood, sunk into the earth as a barrier. I some old scraps of weed suppressant material, and put some down under the fence too, just weighed down with stones. Makes the back of the border look a little unsightly, but it will soon be obscured by plant growth.

taking stock:

Thursday 22nd april 2004 : evening

slug massacre
Last night, having played football and thus still full of adrenaline, I could not sleep at my normal early hour. So I went out into the garden with a torch to look for slugs and other wildlife. After the days rain, the slugs were out en masse, all concentrated around two old bits of wood on which I put bird seed. Most of the slugs were young, but a few were approaching adult size. It went through my head that slugs and snails are bad, so I felt duty bound to kill them. I sliced a few with a trowel (this is my normal method of dispatching the occasional errant slug on an early morning), but after a few slicings this started to sicken me a little, so I picked up a terracotta pot with no drainage hole, went back into the kitchen and filled this with hot water, dosed with rock salt. Back in the garden, I set to work. I round up a load with my trowel, and dropped them off the edge of the step to their watery deaths. A few others I had to deal with individually, flipping them into the water with the trowel. I felt a bit cheapened by this act of mass carnage, but had to make sure they were dead; peering into the water I realised that one or two were trying to swim or crawl out. They weren't dead! I pushed the escaping critters back in, then went back inside, boiled the kettle, and topped up the death pool with boiling water and more salt. This finally did for them.

They are revolting creatures, are slugs, but later that night, as I lay in bed, pondering my savaging of the local population of Arion distinctus, I could feel no peace. The slugs were doing no harm, congregated as they were on paths and gravel, not on plants. On the other hand, if we have to be rid of them, surely better to slice them in half - a short quick death - than to leave them to a silent , slow and unseen, dessicating death by slug pellets?

Sunday 18th april 2004 : afternoon

Last time I wrote I mentioned how quickly the garden had dried out. As I write it is raining and has been pretty much all day; the garden is wet now after 48 hours of rain. I guess the garden needed it.
I 've spent the last few days with a heavy cold, so haven't been out as much as I would have hoped this weekend. I played football yesterday, but today I've forsaken my swim in order not to exacerbate this cold.
First thing today Deborah and I went up to the car booter at Lansdown racecourse. It was cold and dreary, but we bought a Pieris Forest Flame for a fiver, which I'm going to use as a focal point in the large wooden barrel. I've put this in front of the house in an attempt to provide some interest there.

Thursday 15th april 2004 : evening

Three greenfinches were in the garden early this evening, eating seed off the ground. I've not seen these before, and I'll look out for them again, to see if they become regalars.
A couple more lovely days. Warm dusk in England in days like these is hard to beat

Tuesday 13th april 2004 : evening

Today was my final extra days holiday; I have no more leave to use up now, and want to save all future leave for when 'junior' is born, so from now I'll only have the garden in the evenings and weekends. It was a lovely day to finish on today: a really warm, sunny day. I had to do some work first thing, then went swimming, then spent the afternoon outdoors.
What is very noticeable is how quickly the garden has dried out. It is only just over a week since we had significant rain, and we had some three days ago, but the sunnier parts of the garden are dry. I suspect that if we don't have rain in the next few weeks we will be in a 'water shortage' situation.

Phenology
I have added to my involvement with my garden by joining the phenology network. I have a list of events that I have to record - first flowering of various species, bird and wildlife activity etc. By analysing the data from numerous sources, we can gain an idea of how the seasons might be shifting, and how this might relate to global warming and other factors.

Monday 12th april 2004 : evening

Quite surprised on opening this page to see I haven't written for a week. I guess that may be because I have not had any significant work to do in the garden. This time 12 months ago I was still getting the structure of the garden in place. Now, with all my seeds sown and everything pretty much planned, it is just a case of keeping things going.

I've spent much of the Easter weekend visiting people, so we haven't been here that much. This afternoon was the first time I've had a long spell in the garden. Since last week the tulips have started to bloom, and they look wonderful, although there aren't enough of them. There are pockets of them - mainly in containers - not the swathes that would really make an impact. Mum had planted more, in white, purple and red, and it made her garden look so alive yesterday.

My garden is certainly throbbing with bird life, sometimes it's like an aviary out there. Deborah thinks I over feed the birds, and that maybe I should leave them to fend fro themselves a bit more. But I don't like to think they are going hungry. This evening they were still at it well into dusk. The batch of starlings are getting cockier, loitering on the fences even when I am around. They are starting to shit everywhere too. The blackbirds don't seem bothered by me either, although they are far more solitary than the others. Saw the robin yesterday for the first time in weeks.

What have I actually done? Potted on some seedlings today: Cosmos, Gaillardia Goblin, Phlox tapestry and Nigella. I have stacks of unused seed but nowhere else to sow them, with the mini-greenhouse and cold frame fit to bursting.
I still have the larger wooden barrel that I bought from Deborah's mums. Put it outside the front of the house, filled it with a mixture of the heavy clay soil that I dug out to make the pond, with compost, chicken shit, grit and sand. Now I have to decide what to put into it. It needs to be bright: the front of the house is dowdy and unloved and I want people to have something to look at when they are loitering outside the bus stop in front of the house.

The week was really about gradual growth. The two clematis have survived the fence collapse and one is close to flowering. Various other plants that I thought had died in last years drought - various hostas for example - are now showing definite signs of life. Ferns that had died down completely are now slowly unfurling new spores, as they have been doing for millions of years. I may have lost one fern over winter
Today I was delighted to notice that the maple tree that I bought with money that Grandma peabody gave me, and that I think of as her tree, is developing buds. We planted the tree in our lawn about a year ago: at first it prospered but then shed all it's leaves during last summer's heat. I thought it might have died from lack of water in its first year. But no, it's back.

Monday 5th april 2004 : evening

I had my final pre Easter day off today; the plan was to get into the garden in the morning then walk in the afternoon. I've done bits of both, but my enjoyment has been spoiled by the strong wind and cold. My God, this morning it was bitter. Things couldn't be more different than 12 months ago, when by the endless summer had already begun.

This morning I mulched parts of the border in which I won't be planting new stuff in the next week or two. I used bark chips until they ran out, and then I put down a bag of leaves I'd collected last autumn. They haven't rotted down, but I lay them thickly to act as a weed suppressant and moisture retainer.

On last Fridays Gardeners World Monty was extolling the virtues of early staking, so I felt duty bound to do the same. In my small early spring garden there are not many plants that need staking yet. Those that do - a cluster of delphiniums for example, I made some stakes out of dogwood twigs, tied together with green string. Trying to keep a natural look.

Sunday 4th april 2004 : afternoon - more rain

The rain has limited my time in the garden this weekend. I was planning to get into the garden today after my early morning swim, but it has been raining on and off all day, sometimes heavily. I have been sat in the living room, reading and watching bands of rain come in atop the hills. Rain set in yesterday evening, and by the time I went to bed it was throwing it down.

I went over to the farmers market at Green Park station yesterday morning. The nurseries have started turning up. I have some gaps in the long border, and bought a dogwood - cornus Alba aurea to fill one of them. I paid £3.50 for it, about half the price that I'd expect to pay at a garden centre.

Friday 2nd april 2004 : evening - wet start to April

By the end of the day yesterday, the first day of April, it was raining heavily. We all love sunshine, but after a dry spell it is somehow comforting to feel rain again: one feels the earth being cleansed and renewed. This morning the garden, which had been drying out, felt more alive; there was a noticeable increase in the amount of green around - weeds included. But I noticed this evening that the hostas I planted out a couple of weeks ago - just bits of root really - are showing fresh foliage.

This morning I received some plugs that I'd ordered from Mr Fothergill - five plugs each of Coreopsis grandiflora 'Early Sunrise' and Gaillardia grandiflora 'Goblin'. I plan to use them in my naturalistic scheme. Potted them on this evening.

The pond
Last week I built my mini-pond. Beforehand, I read up about ponds on a couple of web sites: beautiful Britain and this personal site.
What I learned form these is to place the pond near undergrowth, so that any wildlife that does use it can can make a quick getaway if needs be.
My pond has turned out to be as small and simple as can be. It is simply an old wooden barrel - treated, lined with pond liner - sunk into a hole I made in the back right corner of the gravel terrace. In the pond are a couple of oxygenating plants and two large stones, so that any amphibian or aquatic life can actually get out of the pond should they find their way in.
I'm looking forward to seeing what, if anything, happens in the pond this summer.