h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just went outside expecting maybe a little bit of melting now that the morning is half over and . . .



it's pouring rain!



This place has crazy weather.

And today it's -15 and snowing!

And as usual we're hovering around zero

Hope you have your Canadian furs on

The thing I've said for years around here is that the winters wouldn't be so bad if they would just make up their minds. If autumn came and the weather gradually got colder until it was about -35 and it stayed there for a couple of months and then got gradually warmer again.

But, no. Here we have to have a huge heavy snowfall in January, a nice warm rain in January, -35 in January, +15 in January, etc.






Not that I'm complaining, mind


I won a little raffle at the local home brew shop the other day: a wee gift basket which included, among other things, a nice little jar of wine mulling spices.

Guess what I'm enjoying this evening.

Enjoy that mulled wine.

I'm fascinated by some desert regions where it gets utterly baking during the day, and below freezing at night, but that is *predicatable*.

Altogether different when its all over the place

-25 today


okay. maybe I'm complaining now.





'. . . desert regions where it gets utterly baking during the day, and below freezing at night . . .'


What seemed like the coldest Christmas Evening I've ever spent was in a campground in the Mojave Desert -- in a torrential rainstorm!

That sounds like the best sort of Christmas evening to me

We're still what you might call a bit coldish - sort of a winter thing.

But I can't believe how little rain here in the south east there has been over the last year. It really was a totally stupid time to build a garden pond that has to rely on natural rainfall for its supply.

Good news is that although we don't have snow..I have snow drops out in my garden now

I have snow -- and ice, out in my garden now.

You may have noticed on another thread that I actually went for an extended beer run today, despite the cold.

Oooh, I'm just looking out the front and there's a whole crowd of cedar waxwings (about fifty) hanging off the Mountain Ash (Rowan to you, perhaps) gorging themselves on the frozen berries. Lots of calories there! The little critters manage, even in this cold.

-25 again today, forecast of +8 tomorrow.

Pretty nondescript slightly mild, slightly chilly and overcast here today.

Planted my Scotch bonnet, similar to habeneros but from the Caribbean chilli seeds today - indoors of course. But last year I left it far too late in planting my seeds.

In other news my herb seeds have failed to arrive. Have to go to the sorting office tomorrow to see if they are there..

A pretty strong south westerlie has just got up. Wonderfully caressing somehow on the face..just went out to fill up the bird feeder.

Dug over half the area earlier to be planted in about a month with the wild flower meadow mix. Blackbirds and robin very happy. A few weeks ago there were quite a few blackbirds in the garden..but now one pair have made it their territory for baby blackbird times ahead. I did actually see two mating about a fortnight ago.

It rained today.


Still about two feet of snow on the ground, of course.

I desperately want rain for my pond. It's getting ridiculously low. A funny thing I've realised is that about a week or so ago I went out at night with a torch and it seemed to be suddenly teaming with life and I thought I saw a weird tadpole thing. I'm pretty sure I was hallucinating cos nothing since...

Insect larvae perhaps?


Years ago I discovered a dozen or so fish swimming about in a pool along a seasonal watercourse (spring runoff, basically). This stream was absolutely dry for perhaps nine months of the year. There was no body of water at the upper end and the lower end was an irrigation reservoir with no regular outflow. Basically the only water in this thing was rainfall and snow melt and it was an apparently closed system. We had a government wildlife guy come out and he identified them as a type of stickleback which is known to travel from one body of water to another through the groundwater.

Yes well they looked like insect larvae..but its bizarre that there has been no sign of them since And I wasn't so well at that time, but it was a nice experience, real or not.

I'm still not quite right I'm aware..but its much better.

I'm glad you're on the mend.


Concerning the insect larvae: they don't hang around in the water forever; many become flying insects and scoot away.

stop being so bloody nice I do have a biology degree..and such things don't just happen in the middle of winter.

It was a vision. I've had it before, I'll have it again. It's like dreaming when you're awake.

Here it goes again:

snowing. almost noon and the temperature is lower than at nine this morning (-1 right now). -17 tonight and a high of -11 for tomorrow. Continuing cold through the beginning of the week and then back up above zero by Friday.

I forgot to add a handy link: http://www.cbc.ca/edmonton/weather/s0000045.html

Look on the bright side. Yes, they are a *bit* chilly but you have lots and lots of sun on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday...