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weather: feb 2004

Bath weather station

Week beginning 22nd Feb - cold, very cold all week. Finally some rain on tuesday, then clear and cold again wednesday, and finally the snow on thursday. Clear and cold - beautiful on friday. Clouding over by saturday lunchtime.
The month started very, very wet and windy, then ended very cold but clear: real clean, crisp winter weather that seems to be increasinly less common in Britain.

Week beginning 15th Feb - a drop of rain on tuesday morning, otherwise dry all week. Getting considerably colder though as the week goes on, and a cold wind begins to blow form the north. By thursday night the garden is noticably dry, just 10 days or so since it was pouring with rain.

Week beginning 8th Feb - warm and dry all week and hardly any wind. The only rain is from an hour or two of the lightest drizzle. Saturday 14th is sunny and dry, like a spring or early summer's day.

Week beginning 1st Feb - gale force winds and heavy showers to start; cold. By the end of the week drier and warmer, but still very windy.

 

 

the garden diary: february 2004

rog's garden diary page - garden under snow 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).Who knows?

february 2004

29th february 2004 : evening

I've spent a lovely day today at Center Parcs near Longleat, so no time for the garden. Obviously March will be a busy month.

28th february 2004 : day

Most of the snow has thawed now, but here are still pockets in shady areas. The long border by the bamboo fence is still covered in a couple of inches of it. Very cold out. POut out extra feed for the birds. On friday morning there was fedding frenzy in theg garden, even seagulls and crows. Today it has been alot quieter, although have seen two robins in together.

26th february 2004 : evening
snow :
I said yesterday that this week nothing much was happening, and then today we have had heavy snow. The whole landscape has changed. Two hours ago, after walking home - I abandoned my car at work - I was stood in the garden in the deepening twilight. The scene was beautiful: the snow had stopped falling, there was no wind, and, as the streets were gridlocked, their was no traffic noise. All I could hear were the faint voices of other people enjoying the snow.
I shaked snow off some of the plants that were wilting under it's weight: the cordylines on the rear terrace and in front of the house, the grasses, the mallow, pots of tulips. I have a recently purchased specimen bamboo - phyllostacis nigra - in a large container near my front door. A couple of its branches were wilting: i've cleared the snow off them and now we'll see how hardy it is. Jeff's Hellebore, which has been flowering so wonderfully in recent weeks, but had looked so forlorn this morning under the weight of last nights heavy frost, was smothered, and I felt compelled to remove every drop of snow from it.
I cleared the path at the front of the house and down the side to the back door and scattered a packet of rock salt over the paths. It seems so rare these days to get such clean, beautiful 'real' snow .

Of course, this snow, following as it does several very cold nights - and there are more to come - will test how hardy some of the plants really are. I've not being doing this long, and generally the last 18 months have been ridiculously warm. Of course I'm worried that plug plants that I've recently will die an early death along with the hellobores and ferns that I planted last autumn.

25th february 2004 : evening
Not much going on this week; i've only had time to go out into the garden (during daylight hours), before work, when I put food out for the birds. With daylight coming earlier, the birds are out earlier, so maybe I'll have to put out the food the night before, but then you risk any overnight rain soaking it.
For the first time I saw a chaffinch in the garden this morning, in the flower border by the newly erected fence. All the books say that the chaffinch is one of the commonest of garden birds, but it was a rare pleasure to have one on my garden.

21st february 2004 : 11.15am
Just been out in the garden for an hour or so. Planted up small plugs of Helenium Gold Rush that I bought from J Parkers, and the larger plants that Debbie and I bought form Hilliers last week.
It's very cold again with this biting north wind. The garden looks a bit desolate actually in this cold dry atmosphere. Ten days ago it was so mild that daffodils were starting to bloom, but in the last few days nothing has happened and everything is in stasis. The perennials have either been cut right back or look forlorn.
Everything awaits the end of winter.

Snowdrops
Last autumn I planted around 150 snowdrop bulbs. I put them in various parts of the gardens, principally in the shady bed that runs along the side of the house adjacent to the kitchen, and in other nooks in the garden, beneath large shrubs and such like. Just the one clump has really flowered well. This clump is in a much more open aspect that most of the snowdrops. I reckon that maybe a third of the bulbs have produced any foliage at all, and maybe 10% have flowered. Of course they do say you should plant snowdrops 'in the green', but I didn't know this when I bought them. Maybe next year we will have more success with them when they've had another year to naturalise.

19th february 2004
Very dry this week so far, but getting colder now. We're in for a serious water shortage unless we get some heavy spring rain.

Spent half an hour or so earlier this evening looking on the web for information about various grasses that I may use as a permamanent backdrop to the naturalistic bed in the garden.
Been reading up on prairie planting and have been looking at grasses like Calamagrostis x acutiflora ('Karl Foerster') , 'Heavy metal' (panicum), Stipa tenuissima, Helictotrichon sempervirens (blue oat grass) and one or two others. They aren't always listed in the major catalogues nor do you see them at the garden centres, but I found a few nurseries selling them. Have decided that 'Karl Foerster' is what I am looking for, and will search out.

16th february 2004
Spent a few hours early on sunday morning in the garden. For the time of year, the weather was incredibly mild, as it has been for a few days. It has felt more like May than February. Great to have no wind, after the buffeting we've taken from the wind in the last couple of weeks. The robin was flitting around all morning.

Last weekend Paul and I had put up the fences again between our garden and number 7, on our right. Doing that had caused the soil to become compacted, so I've had to dig it over. I've put a couple of large bags of compost in, and a load of grit and sand to try to lighten it. I dug through it again: the soil feels and looks lovely now, although it's still quite heavy.

DebIi dug back into the lawn about a couple of feet, just the far side of the eucalypt.
We've now got about another 30 square foot of border to fill.

I want to create a naturalistic look for this border, at least the section nearest the house. I need to successfully grow some flowers from seed other it will cost a lot of money (and somehow defeat the whole point of it..).

I had ordered some plug plants, from J Parkers, and I put the echincacea purperea into the ground. I also moved some clumps of verbena bonoriensis from other areas of the garden. Jane gave me these last summer and they did brilliantly and were still in flower in November and it was only the strong winds that finally did for them.
In the afternoon Deborah and I went up to Hilliers garden centre. As it was Valentines weekend, Deborah had planned to take me up to Westonbirt Arboretum, but she decided that the weather- although very mild - wasn't right : too murky, and Westonbirt needs clear skies or frost to be fully appreciated. So instead she took me to the garden centre. I'm looking for some grasses we don't have - panicum ' Heavy Metal' for example, but they didn't have any. Instead, we bought a selection of small plants from the cottage garden range for the new extended border that I dug out in the morning: achillea, doronicum orientale and phygelius capensis.

9th february 2004
On friday evening, straight form work, I dug over a patch of the long border to use for vegetables. Dug in masses of compost. Last year the patch had a few potatoes, some garlic and a few herbs, but not much else. Going to try and do it properly this year, albeit on a small scale.

Yesterday (sunday), Paul and I put the fences back up, after last weeks gale had blown them down. Paul chopped off two foot off the top of each panel, and we added a foot of trellis. Dug very deep holes for the posts and cemented them in. (Never use metposts is the lesson I have learned from this). The fence is now lower than before, and much more solid. I should have done it properly the first time. Now, hopefully, I won't have to worry every time - and it's quite often - we get gale force winds.