weather - it's official - update

on the news tonight it said we have just had the wettest 7 months since 1900.

I missed all the other interesting facts about this year.

Well, Kent's been wetter than usual, but i bet it's a desert compared to NIreland LOL

Praps you'd better start specialising in swamp plants??

You'll have to start growing rice in your 'Paddy' field Mark ;-)

Begorra

Wintermoor

I'm sure Hampshire has detached from the rest of the UK and floated off into more southerly waters ;)

This is a wetter August than the past 5 years here but it was a dry, dry spring which seems to have made all the flowers bloom later. I recall a May and June not too many years past when it poured down virtually everyday ... never thought I'd dry out and I started to look like a prune. Then someone pointed out I was getting older, think of it as practice ;)

G-r-o-a-n Wintermoor LOL!

You had a dry spring Baa? We had a warm wet early one as far as i can recall (which isn't that far as it happens).

Yes Philomel and Welcome Back! (how did the trip go, we want details *G*) It was a dry April and May, was almost moved to get the hose out. I've no recollection of an April as dry as that!

now it's cold. I was out for the past 2 nights doing batty things and had to wear a sweatshirt. crazy!!

And there was me thinking it was just the contrast with tropical Belize ;)

Were you in Belize Pihlomel?

My daughter did her MSc research in Belize and fell in love with the place. Result - now doing a PhD in tropical ecology and spending 9 months a year in Panama. And it's all Belize's fault!

Hope you had as good a time as she did.

gerddi, I'm half Belizean.

And there was me thinking you were 100% Irish Mark! What is a Belizean doing in Ireland - isn't the climate a bit of a shock, although I suppose the rain will remind your Belizean parent of the rainy season.

It's rainy season in Central America at the moment and after my daughter's been out inthe field it takes several days to get her clothes and equipment dry again.

Gerddi my mum is 71 and left when she was 18. she has only been back 2 times and cant stand the heat!!

Tell your Mum from me that my daughter loves your Mum's native country and swapped from doing botany to tropical ecology so that she could go back - and ended up in "nearby" Panama instead. She's just had an academic paper on what she did there accepted by a journal so her name will be linked with Belize! She said the Belizean people were lovely, many had very little but were always smiling while here in Switzerland they have a very high standard of living and always look miserable.

As for weather - we have 16° and rain. I think this must be the wettest, coldest August for quite a while. We have two or three warmer days forecast for next week - let's hope that forecast is right or I won't have any tomato seeds or dried beans to trade!

Oh, I can relate to that!
Yes, gerddi, i really enjoyed Belize, once i found i could just about cope with the heat. Your daughter has chosen a wonderful part of the world, the wildlife is just so diverse and spectacular!
So i don't hijack Mark's thread I've put some details here:
http://davesgarden.com/showthread/320742.html

More flooding in England on the news tonight - including Kent. So not much of a desert after all LOL

Philomel

Thanks for the link and glad you had a good time. My daughter's a botanist rather than a zoologist, which you sound to be, but said she once had to stop measuring her trees because of a baby anteater calling for its mum an she didn't want to disturb them. A colleague was looking after sea alligators and she said the baby were really sweet (?) - did you see any?

i didn't have such a wonderful experience as your daughter gerddi, but i was the only one in our party to see an anteater in the wild. There are only Northern tamandua in Belize, an arboreal anteater, which is probably the same sort of thing as your daughter encountered if she was measuring trees. I was out alone with my camera when one crossed the track a little way from me. I wasn't close enough to see it's lovely markings, but i got a really good silhouette of it's distinctive nose.
Wasn't sure if you meant that or alligators, which aren't on the list of possibilities for Belize, only crocodiles. We didn't see any of those in the wild - only in the zoo.

I'd love to botanise more there. There are some fascinating and very beautiful plants.

Sorry, I meant sea crocodiles, not alligators. They were in a reserve on the northern coast and were being bred as they are in danger of extinction.

Seems to me botany and zoology are closely linked - the animals eat the plants, after all!

Absolutely gerddi. I'm fascinated by the interactions of all the plants and animals - and the role geology plays etc. Sounds as if your daughter's hooked on the same sorts of things too :)

Funny you mentioned geology - my eldest daughter's a geologist. When we go walking as a family there are my younger daughter and I looking at the plants and animals, my elder daughter and my husband looking at the rock formations while my son (computers and a jazz student) is more interested in the animals and the view.

My youngest daugher's MSc is in botany but she is interested in everything and is in her element in the rain forest. Her PhD subject is forest regeneration and that includes the forest and everything that lives in it.

Everything is is interrelated - this rain that I'm complaining about is benefitting lots of plants and animals (like slugs!) and finding fissures in the rock - we have waterfalls coursing down the mountain opposite that only appear when there is lots of rain.

In spite of the rain, the local buzzards have been around, calling as they fly. A pair have raised a young one down here so I think they must be nesting nearby. Why stay up the mountain when there are pickings in the valley (the valley bottom is about 450m above sea level)!

This is a very silly thread indeed. I applaud its audacity!

Weather? I've had it with outdoor growing. The rain has hammered my crowders and mangetouts, the sun has blistered my tomatoes (and ruined even the peppers in my greenhouse).

Next year, I'm putting in a giant polytunnel - 40 foot by 10 foot. Then let global warming do its worst!

Uh, meanwhile, anybody got any do's and don'ts about polytunnels? Before I commit myself to another Folly?

John