Brrrrr, the big chill has arrived

Sunset today - so early. This was at 4:17.

Until today, November has been exceedingly mild. The mean temperature was 10.3 degrees for the month through the 20th, which is more than a degree warmer than last year. Last year at 9.1C was 2 degrees warmer than 2019 and a degree warmer than the prior two years (8.3C). Lots of flowers have been blooming right through the month, including amazing roses. Bees have been flying right through to this morning. Alex put up a lovely gate to the Apiary and made a cute sign for it.

This afternoon, it turned bitterly cold. We are to have about a week of arctic chill and Friday we will have a gale. They are saying that it may drop below zero at night but as there is no precipitation in the forecast until Wednesday at the earliest, there is little likelihood of snow. We will have little cloud cover so we may yet get frost. That would be welcome as it might kill off some of the pests and coax everything into dormancy. 

It was a beautiful Autumn, with lots of colour. Most of the leaves have now dropped, the donkeys are in the barn, and the sunrises and sunsets have been spectacular. But we did not get to see the lunar eclipse as there was too much cloud cover. We even had enough leaves remaining that we had to rake them today. 

The wine is doing well; the bubbling has slowed down. Time to rack the white in particular. The yeast has settled nicely at the bottom of the demijohn. The red is taking longer to settle but it has more volume.

The mushroom kits have stopped producing so I put one out by the alder trees above the 'Avenue' and the oyster mushrooms I put out by the beech tree in the opposite corner. Hopefully, there are enough spores left to populate edible mushrooms in our 'forest'. 

Beautiful Autumn colour this year. 

The leaves didn't get blown off or burnt.

Vineyard today.

Polytunnel goodies.

Roses still blooming

Mushrooms in the fallen leaves

Cosmos finally bloomed - in November

Poppy this morning

Hesperantha or Schizostylis - not sure which.

Sunrise Sunset Times of Newport, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Location: Ireland > Co. Mayo > Carrowbeg (Fergus) >

Timezone:

Europe/Dublin

Current Time:

2021-11-21 16:57:56

Longitude:

-9.5463685

Latitude:

53.8852758

Sunrise Today:

08:19:00 AM

Sunset Today:

04:29:50 PM

Daylength Today:

8h 10m 50s

Sunrise Tomorrow:

08:20:44 AM

Sunset Tomorrow:

04:28:38 PM

Daylength Tomorrow:

8h 7m 54s

The new gate to the apiary path

Bracing for Storm Ellen

Rondo grapes

The vines have been progressing well and the Rondo grapes, though small, look promising. We've had a wonderful bout of fine weather, even when the southern part of the island has had torrential rains and flooding. But now we sit bracing ourselves for storm Ellen, the result of post-tropical storm Kyle and a new depression that will feed it to create a powerful cyclonic Force 11 storm. It's to hit tonight, with the strongest winds in the south which has a red warning. We have an orange warning and it looks like the eye is going to pass right over us, just as last year Hurricane Lorenzo's eye passed directly overhead. 

It's obviously going to affect our harvest as the amount of rainfall will be high. At least we have a month to go before harvest, so maybe things will even out before that. You can see the wind damage on the leaves from the last storm that hit at the end of spring. Everything was just recovering and now this. It's getting tough.

But at least we have the bees, native black honey bees. A friend brought over a swarm for the hive we have had standing empty after the year that all the bees died from a very wet winter. I hope these guys stick around to help pollinate the orchard and vegetable garden. 

The climate disruption and the Covid complication are wreaking havoc. At least we have the US elections to distract us. 

Two systems merging: TS Kyle plus another low

The blue spot in the middle is passing over Clew Bay -- our house. 

It's already raining ahead of the storm

I hope these don't become before and after shots

Alex checking the hive.

I told the donkeys to seek shelter - they went over to the North side