Re: South of the Equator (was Winter Survivors' (?) Report
Dave Poole wrote:
>
> Reading Tim's lament (and I do sympathise Tim) I'm prompted to put in
> my own report from about 300 or so miles south of where Tim lives.
> You'll see just how different a comparatively short distance can make.
>
> As far as temperatures go, winter here has been unexceptional, with
> only 3 air frosts - 2 at minus 1C and one at minus 3C. All of these
> occurred between Christmas and Dec 30 with nothing since. Late autumn
> gave us twice the normal rainfall in October and November and December
> confounded us by missing out on the normal week of bitter north
> easterlies at the start of the month. It further went on to give us 5
> days above the magic 15.5C (60F) and before Christmas Eve, the lowest
> night temperature was 8C. Most of my Cannas were flowering almost as
> well in December as they were in September! 3 frosts put paid to the
> flowers, but were not enough to cause them to die back.
Hi Dave, glad to hear someone is happy with the weather!!
The main grumble here was scads of deep deep overcast (though not much
rain) over most of spring and the early part of summer. Only since Feb
started have we seem some of the clear skies we have been longing for.
Curiously apart from onions and tomatoes almost everything in this
garden has done well with most shrubs,bulbs etc flowering as usual (or
even better)and loads of fruit set. We were picking early pears late
this afternoon once some of the heat went out of the day and enjoyed the
very first bunches of ripe grapes with our evening meal..One major
bonus, we are amazingly without the hungry wasps which usually try to
share the bounty with us. Goodness knows why they are absent at present,
but we are not knocking it <G>
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata (near Wellington, capital city of New Zealand)
