Well, what a wash-out it has been for me this week in terms of doing anything meaningful in the garden. From the weather reports, I suspect for some of you it has been white-out rather than wash-out. Again.
At such moments, penned indoors, I like flicking back through my gardening diaries from previous years. I don't write in them religiously, and it is usually no more than a few sentences when I do, and at the time, it barely seems of interest. But it is when I look back that I see their real worth.
So, on 23 February 2004, I can see that I was busy pruning Buddleias. These days I leave them a few more weeks to try and delay their flowering to try and catch summer butterflies at their peak. Six years ago I was also tidying the old dead stems of the previous year's herbaceous plants, and again my current attitude is to leave them in place that little bit longer, just in case they still harbour insects or maybe their eggs or larvae tucked away inside.
One of the really interesting things that the diaries show is phenological changes. (As regular readers will know, I love my words, and phenology means the study of things appearing or coming into view. It's what a 'phenomenon' is too - something that appears). So, on 23 February 2004, I recorded the first Wild Daffodils of the year coming into bloom in my woodland garden. In comparison, it took until 25 February in 2006, and 27 February in 2005, but in 2008, well what an advanced year that was, with seven out already by the 9th.
This year of course things are very different. The daffodil leaves are barely a couple of inches high with no sign of flower buds yet, let alone a glimpse of sunshine yellow petals. My estimate is that this year they will some three weeks behind average at least.(The photo is actually from my garden on 11 March 2007 - oh, how I'm looking forward to sights like that this year!)
So what does this say about climate change? Well, nothing actually. Just as if they had come into flower in the last week of January it wouldn't have said anything either. You sometimes see the media trying to latch on to single events as evidence one way or the other for climate change, but the climate is all about averages and patterns that emerge over long time periods. So I guess the thing that is important here is that I am at least keeping the records so that at some stage I can see if I can spot a pattern.
And of course my diaries give me a nice excuse to wallow in remembering my gardening from years gone by. I'd encourage every gardener to give it a try!
I love the idea of a wildlife diary but I know with the best will in the world I’d never remember to mark down the first “everything” but there is a high chance I’d remember the first Snowdrop and Daffodil because they are so eagerly awaited.
My Daffodils have fat buds which are only days away from opening.