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

Dormant season

This week we had a cold snap. Ground frost and freezing fog turned the landscape into Narnia. The water froze solid in the containers the cats drink from and the glass in the cold frame was covered in gorgeous crystal patterns. So I went into the vineyard to see if it was time to prune the grapevines.

Interesting!  The red grape vines had dropped all their leaves, but the white grape vines were holding on tightly. Still fully leafed. So "not yet" was the answer.

I raked the leaves from the lawn instead. The trouble with planting deciduous trees is that they drop their leaves and make work. I think I'll go for more evergreen from now on.