Re: Hardy fuchsias in Mediterranean climate

Pamela Steele wrote:


Moira , this is really helpful info  -- for me too, I could never grow
hanging baskets of fushias in London, they never survived so I gave up!!.
Hope you are both well.  We have had the most terrible frosts over winter in
the CB - unheard of .. As we are very coastal most of our plants survived
but some even 1 km inland are decimated. Black cactus and Agave!!
The last frost was 25-30 years ago!
Hi Pamela
We are well thank you and just at the tail end of autumn, but I think the winter rains are upon us already.

I wonder if your unprecedented frosts are another symptom of the disturbed weather plaguing the world just now and believed to be due to global warming. Here we have had a series of mild winters recently but a lot of major floods, not just in winter but at any time of the year. The worst in Wainui hit us in February last year (which should have been the middle of summer and traditionally hot and dry). The last comparable storm prior to this was a winter one just after we came to the valley fifty years ago! Our gentle little river came down like a ravening monster, washed away one bridge and pulled up a great many bankside trees (even willows) piling them up against the remaining ones, and also sliced away some notable sections of bank depositing them down river as shingle beds..

Fortunately its course through the town runs in parkland, so no houses were involved, though a few lost slices of garden. Away from the river though the combination of wet and high winds toppled a good few trees. Thankfully though the valley sides are so steep, no dangerous slips occurred.

As you can imagine it necessitated huge cleanup, but now just over a year later one can scarcely see what happened. It is astonishing how quickly nature heals.

Floods also marked summer in many other places in the country last year and most of these were not so fortunate as us. One extensive farming area further north in particular lost a lot of stock and ripening crops and had many houses washed away or destroyed by water and mud running through them. There were thank goodness no human casualties in that storm though one woman had a lucky escape after falling into the river when she encountered one of her own cows making for safety and managed to hitch a ride. As you can imagine that cow is now enjoying a very good life! (I was going to say "living in clover", but I guess all NZ cows expect to do this as a matter of couse as they graze all year round.)

We have had two wet summers now which is very abnormal for us. Winter, though, we expect to be wet, but it does not seem at present one can even guess what sort of weather to expect from week to week. I fear we live in interesting times!

Hope you have a good summer anyway.

Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
NEW PICTURES AND DIAGRAMS ADDED 20/Feb/2005

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