Tuesday 14th March 2023 - Mish Mash, Frost Damage and Cavorting in the Pond

We have had a right old mish mash of weather so far this year. It could be described as yoyoing. Recently, the wind is sometimes gusty and cold but then when it moved south, was pleasantly warm. For the most part it’s been chilly with rain and cloud, interspersed with the occasional sunshine and temperatures have managed to climb up from single figures, centigrade, into double figures. I have been monitoring the fuchsias in the garden, a couple are showing buds but I am wondering if the rest have been killed by the frosts, which we woke to day after day, in January. But there is still time yet for the fuchsias to show signs of life and if they don’t, I will be looking at the stalls on the weekly village car boot sales for replacements, a great place for reasonably priced plants.

Moving away from plants, we have suffered some frost damage to a concrete infill on the drive and the strawberry planter. Peter will replace the drive infill, when the weather is more congenial, and I am not particularly concerned about the strawberry planter, which hasn’t been planted up for a couple of years. The promenade has experienced frost damage too. Like our drive, it is the infills which have been affected with a recent high tide lifting some quite large pieces of concrete. I took a photo of these and included this below, as today’s photo.

Whatever the weather, this has not stopped the frogs from spawning. After removing as much of the duck weed as I could, a couple of weeks ago, each time I have walked down the garden I have peered into the pond to see if there is any spawn. I was delighted the other day to see a very large mass at one end. Then, on Sunday there was a lot of movement, in the water which looked almost like waves. On investigating I could see three frogs cavorting in the water and wondered if there would be more spawn and yes there is. Yesterday another mass appeared and not three frogs but I counted eleven little faces looking up at me. For such a small pond, I was surprised to see so many but Peter did remind me there were quite a number in the water filled washing up bowl, he had near the vegetable plot where we used to live, which must have spawned elsewhere.