Not Great Weather for Our Garden
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Looking at our garden you'd never know it was spring. It's a smidge ironic that global warming seems to have resulted in tempest and deluge in this corner of the globe over the last few years. We have been struggling to build a new house over the last year, and now the weather is making even the landscaping damn near impossible. That's even with jolly wetland and pond features - swales and ditches and bogs and overflows.
The (heavy clay) soil is completely unworkable. Some of it has turned into Glastonbury gloop. Even where it hasn't I can't dig it manually, let alone get machines on it. I'm trying to sow green manure in the swamp that will be our back garden to improve things. Our wildflower seed has arrived for the (wetland) meadow areas. Ha ha. No chance of anything even germinating in these temperatures. Friends of mine locally are just giving up on their gardens. It's probably sensible ahead of the spring proper, which when it does finally arrive will feature two months of drought before the cricket season starts in earnest. Cue Biblical downpours again.
I suppose this extreme weather is gratifying for us in a way, as we're building a stunning new house to deal with it. In the garden, though, we need help. Perhaps it's time for the gardening Press to scrap all those articles and programmes about Mediterranean planting and address the issues we're actually confronted with as gardeners. If the weather here is getting more extreme rather than warmer as a result of global warming could we have some help in dealing with it? I have no idea how to tackle our land - no idea at all - and I can find no advice other than the helpful observation that roses like heavy clay. WTF? as the youth of today might say. In the meantime, here's a cheery tune about the weather here for the youth of yesteryear. Perhaps it hasn't hasn't changed much over the last 60 years after all.