OneGuyFromBarlick

A very strong southerlywind driving the rain. Bad flooding down south especially Somerset.

Very heavy spell of rain in Nelson early evening/teatime. Cleared up by 7 pm to a colder evening. Dryer sunny day tomorrow. Could get a spell of Winter weather next week ?

It stayed windy and relatively dry till 11:00 and then started raining. It had stopped by 8pm but was a nasty afternoon. Glass was falling like a stone yesterday and got back to 28.9" in the afternoon, it is back at 29.2" now and not raining. Wind has dropped. Could be a better day.
Met Office forecast a respite today but a return to wind and rain tomorrow and over the weekend.

Dry and frosty start this morning and the glass has risen to 29.5" but there is some wild weather in the sea areas to the South and the forecast is that more gales and heavy rain are to hnit the SW and Wales today. Tiz will not be pleased! It looks as though we are being let off lightly in Barlick. Wind and rain forecast for later today and tonight but nowhere near as severe as other parts.

Everywhere here white with frost this morning Eileen

More rain here in Pendle tonight. Looks like flooding could occur again in south-west England and Wales overnight. Further rain tomorrow night. Colder next week.

I think it's rained quietly all night. Calm and not cold. Glass has dropped to 28.9" and after this low has moved through we'll get the north wind on its back edge. It's November.

Hot, humid and horrid today.
Please send snow, rain, wind and fog in substantial quantities. (failing that, pics of cold weather will be appreciated)

Just back from our walk Maz. It's stopped raining but there must have been a lot during the night. As My mate Colin said when we arrived back at Kayfield after a couple of days in Scotland, "It must have rained hard, the puddles are full." The puddles are full and Butts Beck is roaring over the weir behind B&D's. A nasty northerly wind is getting up and it doesn't surprise me that there is some snow on the North Yorks Moors. From the news, a lot more rain fell during the night in the SW. A lot of people are flooded out. The watercourses in Barlick are coping well.

Marilyn wrote:Hot, humid and horrid today.
Please send snow, rain, wind and fog in substantial quantities. (failing that, pics of cold weather will be appreciated)

Sort of live picture from our living room window (updated once a minute). No snow, just dreary at the moment, it cold enough too say its cold.

How can you update it every minute ( she asks in a terribly impressed whispered voice)?
Cool!
So if I come back tomorrow will it still be here?

Ah. . .snapshot from your monitor. . .i thought I was going to get to watch that flower die.
Yes, it looks kind of cool out there. No need for sunglasses!

What a weird day - rain and wind this morning and now beautifl blue sky with light clouds racing across the sky.

Same here Moh but by evening it was raining again and still is this morning. Reports of another bad night in the South. Glass is rock steady on 29" so no change yet. Butts Beck will be high again this morning but so far the watercourses are coping well.
07:45. Back from our walk in the gloom. Not raining now, no wind and full overcast. However, we are promised more rain later, on it's way up to us now from Wales. One ray of jope, we are nearing the shortest day on December 21st when we shall see the sun getting the upper hand again. At the moment, letting a black dog roam free in the dark needs quite a bit of faith!

It is cold and wet with the wind coming from the east - supposed to get very cold be end of week.

Marilyn wrote:Ah. . .snapshot from your monitor. . .i thought I was going to get to watch that flower die.
Yes, it looks kind of cool out there. No need for sunglasses!

You can watch the flower die in real time- its updated once a minute refreshing your browser will bring a later picture .Theres a datestamp in the bottom right of the picture. Its an Hydrangea bush. Quite a large one, we're loathe to prune it because an Hydrangea doesn't flower the year after if you prune it. It's magnificent in summer.

Its fully automated. a small computer automatically grabs a picture from a webcam and makes it available on the internet.

Heres a stored picture from the beginning of November. The flowers still have some of their colour and a bit of rare wintery sunshine..

I prune my hydrangeas every year and they flower profusely every year. I never fertilise them or feed them. You take the stem back to a healthy bud as far back as you want. Keep some of the woody stem , however. one book i read said to prune it to one inch above the start of the previous years growth. I don't bother with that, I just keep a nice size bush, effectively reducing the size by half. I do it normally in the spring as the buds start to shoot, but I have done it in the late winter garden clear up too. Then I bring the flowers in as dried flowers over winter. I never prune them back to the base unless the plant has got very woody. I think that is when they don't flower the following year. I seem to think I did that with a hydrangea in a pot.

That is so cool to watch, Pluggy.

Moh was right, rain out of the east for much of the day yesterday, cold and steady. It stopped in the evening and isn't raining now but everything is wet. Glass has gone up a bit to just over 29.2" so the low must be moving out to the East. The ground is absolutely sodden but no reports of flooding around here as far as I know. The forecast is for it to brighten up.... About time, but I suppose that means colder.

Complete opposite here, Stanley.
Hot, hot hot! Has been for the last week ( mid to high 30's) and heading for 40 on Thursday.
7pm...I have just been out watering the garden and boy is it horrid out there, with still another hour plus until sunset.
Feel like a good rub down with a cold wet face washer!

We call them flannels Maz. That east wind is bitterly cold.

As the low moves east the wind has gradually swung into the North and yesterday afternoon we saw patches of blue sky! Glass is rising, heading for 29.6" so we can expect a respite from the rain and perhaps a cold spell. The Shipping Forecast is much more settled. There's a high coming in from the West and this is what is giving us the north wind. Expect forecasts of snow on high ground!

Marilyn wrote:Complete opposite here, Stanley.
Hot, hot hot! Has been for the last week ( mid to high 30's) and heading for 40 on Thursday.
7pm...I have just been out watering the garden and boy is it horrid out there, with still another hour plus until sunset.
Feel like a good rub down with a cold wet face washer!

One of my customers, has the solution to this, He's an Aussie who married a Barlick lass. They maintains 2 houses, One in Sydney, one in Barlick. They actually 'Summer' in both counties, ,but if the heat gets to you you could always "Winter" in both countries. Probably far from cheap I suspect......

Pruning hydrangeas. My gardener (grandiose name for a bloke who comes round and does the whole row every couple of weeks in grass cutting season) steadfastly refuses to prune it. I believe it depends on the species and even the the 'strain' of the individual bush. Some are a lot more tolerant of pruning than others. Some advocate pruning the beasts in early summer, when the flowers have just come out because the buds for next year form in late summer. My mate envied mine, he said his never flowered. I explained they were tetchy about pruning and last year he didn't touch it. It has flowers this year. I don't maintain it at all. Its an aid to navigation for people to find me. "Follow the satnav and its the house with the big hydrangea hanging over the wall and the solar panels"

Interesting pluggy, as I prune all of mine and they are all different. Well if it works, i agree , leave it, but certainly my hydrangeas are always covered. The ones in France grow so large they have to be pruned, not so in Rochdale where there is little growth but an abundance of flowers

Just read an article, apparently the key is to leave old wood, which I do, and to leave the buds on which I do. If you cut down to the ground you remove both and hence no flowers the next year, which is what I thought. The article recommends to only prune if necessary if the plant is too big, which I do, and to take some of the old and ad all the dead branches back to the ground to encourage regeneration, which I do . Thus I seem to be doing the right thing , but then so are you. It depends on how big the space is for your bush and how old it is. They suggest not to prune anything younger than 5 years old, and there is no need to prune at all if you have the space to allow the plant to grow. Apparently it is the pendular species that need to be treated differently. It seems that what I call pruning is little more than deadheading like you do with roses, cutting off the dead flowers to a couple of buds down. I have been very vigorous at times but have always made sure the active buds are still numerous and that is the key. The article says, not to prune before the buds appear or you will cut off too much active stem.

I had never had hydrangeas until we bought our French house. Then the garden was completely overgrown and the four hydrangeas we had had taken over, blocking the route to the back door. At the time I looked up how to prune them and have just done the same ever since. I presume I must have read a similar article then and just carried on.

Now I will know not to bother unless that back door disappears again!!