Spring in the temperate zone

[Kirbstone]

2011 has presented us with the driest warmest spring any of us can remember. Our April temps. have been more like July/August for nearly a month now, consequently we have had an early explosion of blossom and foliage, as though our very severe Winter never happened, but not quite. Lots of plants, small trees and hedges have died, to be left until at least July to see if they'll sprout again.
On the 19th I was reminded of that lovely peice of orchestral music by Frederick Delius....'On first hearing the Cuckoo in Spring'. A joyous sound. We have no swallows yet, however.
Pic 1 is to be compared to the same view in Winter which appeared in my 'Farewell old Friend' thread in the Personal Stories section.

Rs H.W. obscured by blossom trees.jpg

Pic 2 : This tree is only ten years old and has grown straight in the lee of the house, protected from the ferocious prevailing winds which bend every other tree for miles around.

Rs HW. turning circle cherry 2011.jpg

Pic 3 promises a bumper crop of apples on our trained trees on the soft fruit frame.

Rs Apple blossom profusion April 2011.jpg

Tom K.

[crfriend]

Thanks, Kirbstone, for reminding those of us on the left side of the pond that it's Spring -- because we really don't see many signs of it, save for an occasional shoot coming up from the tulips.

It's been getting down to -1 C nightly on a regular basis, and it's been raining for near a week straight, and is going to continue doing so for most of another. Daytime highs are in the low- to mid- teens (C) and we're expecting a mix of snow and rain tonight and tomorrow.

I am so ready for miniskirt weather! (But, like the Boston Red Sox, "Maybe next year.") I've been cold for 6 1/.2 months and I am tiring of it.

That said, at least we haven't been getting any of the really heavy stuff like severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, so we're lucky in that regard.

[Uncle Al]

..........And you're not down here where we're in a drought conditions.
We're still having wildfires burning over 400,000 Acres of land west and
north west of Ft. Worth. 200+ homes have been burned to the ground
with the estimated value $4+Mil.

The tornadoes went north of us and what minimal storms we did get,
moved east into Mississippi, Alabama, etc., and spawned 25 tornadoes.

In this case, I'll take the cold & wet over drought & fire anytime

Uncle Al
Who really needs the rain

[Kirbstone]

Of course the USA is so vast that great climatic differences are to be expected between North & South. I think that Texas would be classed as sub-tropical, not temperate, whereas New England is nearly as high up as we are (54 degrees N.), but without the very strong gulfstream influence we enjoy (for the present!)
Carl R.F.will be recommending donning a miniskirt while viewing our max/min. shade thermometer this week.

Rs April 2011 temps..jpg

Notwithstanding our mildness, Ireland is one of the windiest places in the Northern Hemisphere, witness the bent trees just 100yds. down our drive towards the road. Fortunately we seldom get tornadoes and such like.

Rs Bent Cherryblossom tree on Drive..jpg

Anyway, looking down towards our little road, our planted drive trees now form a good screen, which this week looked like high Summer. In 2000 we bought this plot as a featureless bare boggy field!

Rs HW. Drive & Blossom trees.jpg

Tom K.

[crfriend]

Carl R.F.will be recommending donning a miniskirt while viewing our max/min. shade thermometer this week.

Your humble Master Barista was really -- and I mean strongly -- tempted to let loose with a blast of invective in response to this, especially as I look out my computer-room window I see snow falling. Big, fat, soggy flakes to be sure, but snow nonetheless. Miniskirt temperatures here are still weeks away -- likely late June -- and I'm not even going to take them out of "cold storage" for another two or three weeks.

In 2000 we bought this plot as a featureless bare boggy field!

That's quite the landscape improvement, then! Nicely done!

By the by, who's "R.F."? (Those were also my dad's initials, and where I got the "R" from. Also stands for "Radio Frequency" and likely another raft of things...)

[Kirbstone]

Carl,
It's hard to believe that it's still snowing in New England. I remember when we lived in Hampshire in 'Old England' returning from an Alpine ski holiday on April 24th and driving to work the following day through a blizzard, which covered all the blossom trees while they were fully out!
It may well happen here again, but if it does the temp. dip would be only for a few hours at most, and all would be gone very quickly. A few years ago we had a frost in May which wiped out all the apple blossom and crop for that year.

I may be mistaken, but your Cybersignature 'crfriend' I took to mean Carl R. Friend, hence the R.F.

For our Sat. row at 07.00 hours this morning we had a relatively mild 10-11 degrees and tracksuit tops & bottoms came off pretty quickly, allowing severe torture to commence after a short warm-up. It's the Regatta Season and our eight has already won two gongs (medals), unbeaten so far. In June we attack the UK Masters' in Nottingham and tougher oppo. In July we take on the Europeans and Americans at Henley Masters'...a week later than the Royal Regatta.
In September they are going to the Worlds' in Poznan in Poland and alas I have to bow out, as I'm sailing the Baltic with my old German Shanty-choir, which will be a lot less arduous!, but an entirely different sort of fun. That sort of invite comes only once in 6 years and is not to be refused, but the dates clash. My fellow rowers have forgiven me.
Tom K.

[crfriend]

It's hard to believe that it's still snowing in New England.

This was just an insult -- Mother Nature "thumbing her nose at us", if you will. It stopped pretty quickly, the temperatures are up around 4 degrees C as I write this, and no snow stuck to the ground. It's just the fact that it happened that torqued me off.

A few years ago we had a frost in May which wiped out all the apple blossom and crop for that year.

We occasionally get those, but the customary "date of last freeze" in the parts where I dwell is typically around the 29th of April -- and we're still not there yet!

I may be mistaken, but your Cybersignature 'crfriend' I took to mean Carl R. Friend, hence the R.F.

Indeed. I've got a perfectly good name, and I see no reason not to use it -- save for the fact that it does sometimes cause grief in e-mail "spam" filters. There was one time where another e-mail postmaster at another site expressed incredulity at my name and wouldn't shut up about it until I faxed him a snippet of my government-issued ID card.

Congratulations on the rowing victories -- and may you continue to rule the rivers! Pity you'll miss the World's in Pozan, but the other engagement trumps rowing. Is the Henley Masters' televised?

[Kirbstone]

TV coverage of minority sports like rowing doesn't attract top dollar, so coverage is limited to the (Oxford/Cambridge) Boat Race and perhaps the odd race at Henley Royal. Now that they have at last built a proper international standard rowing course near Windsor they will attract major events, like for instance the 2012 Olympics!
They'll televise that, of course. That venue is called the Dorney Lake.
As to a lot of old lags trying to do half of what they used to do when they were young lads/lassies....No public interest there, so no TV. The international rowing distance is 2,000meters/roughly 6 minutes, usually six to eight lanes. HRR course is just two boats at a time and one mile and 550 yards, or about 2100 meters.

Masters are required to race over just 1,000 meters/roughly 3 minutes, and by the time a boat load of 60+ year-olds has covered the course, some 3m 20-odd secs.have elapsed, hence the FISA (International body) handicapping tables. At Masters' events they reserve one lane for rescue craft, so max. boats per race is seven.

In Ireland the pool of rowers is so small that entered crews are almost invariably of disparate age-averages, so seconds at the start are given the older crews, the younger crews having to wait patiently for the countdown to the 'off' and chase the older boats. Remarkably this works well and there are some very exciting finishes.
At larger gatherings there are multiple entries in each age category, so it's side-by-side bloodletting, no prisoners taken from the start to the finish. We generally have to go abroad to get this & it's totally gut-wrenching throat-rasping stuff, definitely not for the unprepared!

On a gentler note our Springtime Summer continues and we entertained one granddaughter to a campfire grill-up down by the lake. The sunset that followed was all the right colour, so Grandmama and seven-year-old are camped out there for the night together in their 'teepee'. They should experience a lovely Easter Day dawn which no doubt will be long remembered.

Rs April 2011 camp by boating lake..jpg

Tom K

[DALederle]

This morning it was 41 F. in the Chicago area. According to the weather services this is early March like Temps. Of course, early March this year was even colder.
We are getting warm spikes, individual days, were it gets up to nearly 70 F. but then drops the next day back to the 50 F. or lower, like today.
I woke up so chilly, 69F inside my house that I had to turn on the heat, again.
I can wait to turn the heat off so I can catch up on my gas bill. I always get ahead for the summer on the gas bill and then get it negative by the end of winter. But this year winter keeps peeking back at us, just around the corner.
Please, warm weather soon!
That's my daily prayer now.

Dennis A. Lederle
B-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-!

[Grok]

I am still using heat. Winter started early in Seattle with a snowstorm before Thanksgiving; and lingers in the form of chilly temperatures.

[Skywalker015]

It is middle of summer here man! coolers are trying hard to keep the room cool!

[Milfmog]

It is middle of summer here man! coolers are trying hard to keep the room cool!

Hi Skywalker,

Where's "here"? Why not introduce yourself in the introductions area? No need to tell us any more than you are happy to share but a general idea of where you are, how often and where you wear kilts / skirts, how your family and friends reacted (if they know) etc etc etc all add colour to your posts.

Have fun,


Ian.

[crfriend]

It is middle of summer here man! coolers are trying hard to keep the room cool!

Hi Skywalker,

Where's "here"?

Well, the IP address indicates Bangladesh, so there's a start. I can well imagine it's rather sweltering there.

Why not introduce yourself in the introductions area? No need to tell us any more than you are happy to share but a general idea of where you are, how often and where you wear kilts / skirts, how your family and friends reacted (if they know) etc etc etc all add colour to your posts.

Seconded!

[Kirbstone]

Yes, It would be interesting to know where Skywalker hangs out. April can't be midsummer anywhere except in equatorial zones where it's Summer all the time anyway.
In our little corner of the Northern Temperate Zone we haven't had significant precipitation for some eight weeks now... an abnormally dry Spring with mid-Summer temperatures frequently, although today the Nor-Easter is strong and cool, so it's a light jumper up top.

Our isolated duckpond has reached a low muddy level, so tonight I got out our Honda 4.5 horse pump and 110 meters of flat US firehose and rolled it all the way to the duckpond. The sucker on the pump is immersed in our local stream which snakes along the N. border of our place....an unlimited supply of surface water

Pump for top-ups.jpg

. The pump hardens the 2" dia. pipe well and a couple of hours running had our pond well topped up again.

Rs Duckpond top-up April 2011.jpg

This is just untreated surface water, suitable for ponds &c.

For our domestic water we had a well drilled 71 meters straight down to connect with the local Pollardstown Fen aquifer, which has supplied J Arthur Guinness with gin-clear water for his brewery, piped from there 30 miles to Dublin some 250 years ago!!!
Tom K.