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Cold
Damn cold. And no sign of it warming up much either.
Cold, but not coldest!
So absolutely no garden or nursery work happening. Not a jot. Zilch. Bugger all. Which is all a bit strange really; we don’t expect to do much during the winter months – we work 7 days a week from spring to autumn, so the winter is our “weekend” – but it’s very unusual indeed to have done nothing at all for as long as we’ve had to this winter.
And bizarrely, it hasn’t been that cold. Well, okay, it has been absurdly cold, but we’re used to living in the coldest place in England, and during this cold snap the weather seems to have been happening elsewhere, and this part of Shropshire has been cossetted in its own little microclimate.
Cheshire, just a little north of here, and Oxford – that’s the soft south surely – both recorded temperatures around minus 17 centigrade last week, and all we could muster was a paltry minus 14! And very little snow – less than a couple of inches, certainly substantially less than most parts of the country if the news media are to be believed.
Is that Doctor Zhivago over there?
So the world is on hold until the weather loosens its grip; we can’t even manage the bonfire we’d been looking forward to following our tree felling – we did try, but the wood is just too wet and cold, so even that avenue of outdoor fun has been closed off to us!
It still looks rather attractive over there though, don’t you think? Taking the trees down has allowed a lot more wonderful winter sunlight into the garden, and that must augur well for the fruit and veg we’re hoping to grow there later in the year.
And so for the moment, we’ll make the best of it. The countryside looks wonderful, and if the weather men are to be believed this is a once in 30 years experience, so it’s one to savour rather than whinge about!