Thursday, February 05, 2004

Nature Notes

The snowdrops have been blooming for a couple of weeks now; and it's now light enough when I leave the house in the morning to see that not only are they now at their height, but so are the little blue irises (iris reticulata - or should that be irides reticulatae) by the pond and that the crocuses (croci?) in the front garden are starting to burst their buds too.

The weather is being very mild - grey, but warm enough to be comfortable - rather than macho - T-shirt weather. 25-30 years ago, I reckoned that the first such day was around the 15th of March, and the about or just below zero weather of last week was normal at this time of year. Global warming has happened.