No snow here in Pontardawe - the Swansea area, about 100 miles from Vee. Probably too near the sea. And this ('sheltered', warden-managed accommodation) flat I've just moved to is warm and pleasant so I don't even know what it's like outside. Quite a difference from the old house which registered every puff of wind or drop of precipitation. But I do miss the old place..... not sold yet so I'm still having to heat it and now in a state of chaos as we try to pack up and get rid of things.

Apparently we're likely to get another month of this flipping freeze-up, here in UK.

Dido, I spent a few years in a sheltered accommodation flat in High Wycombe and it was wonderful to be so warm after freezing in an old house in West Wycombe!
We have had a hot March in Western Australia but it is now rainy and cold but we are promised better weather for the Easter break.
I have seen the dreadful weather in the UK on the news with farmers digging out their sheep from deep snow.
Vee, we are getting huge power bills here too with a Carbon Tax added although as a senior I get some assistance. Some seniors who pay high rents cannot afford to put on their heat and sit rugged up in bed after an early evening meal. It is a disgrace in a wealthy country.

Here in the Midwest US, where it is spring break week for our university, colleges, and schools, it's 25 degrees F (-3 C) this morning. The 9.5 in (24 cm) of snow we received on Sunday is getting crusty when we'd prefer that it melt. We've had three major snows in the past six weeks and are more than a little tired of it, though we are trying hard to be grateful, as we know the farmers need this moisture after last year's drought.

Lingering snow piles,
Edged with ice,
Wouldn't sunny Spring
be nice !

Below freezing when we wake up in the morning, and then 60's (sometimes 70's) by tea time. We have had some high 80's so far this year, but thank goodness it has returned to more seasonable temperatures... Not ready for summer yet!

Annpan,

I don't think anyone should go cold in winter. I think heating should be classed as one of the necessities of life and therefore should be a free commodity. That's the only thing I would campaign on, if I were a politician.

Dido

It's spring weather in Reykjavík, with temps around 5 ðC and a soft breeze blowing. Yesterday it was sunny and felt almost like summer. This is kind of weather at this time of the year often goes hand in hand with frost and blizzards in Britain and on the European mainland. In the summer sunny, warm weather here often means it will rain in Britain.

Unfortunately we had a long warm spell in February that was followed by a 2-day blizzard which seems to have killed all the spring flowers and the buds on the trees.

Greetings from the suburbs of Philadelphia. It is 41F as I write this, and sunny. Yesterday we had a freakish snowstorm, accumulations were only 2-3 inches, and mostly on the grass. The roads were just a slushy mess. I have a few daffodils already blooming, although their faces may be in the snow this morning. The snow is melting fast and I can hear my rain gutters dripping. Spring is in the air, but it will be a couple more weeks before I really want to spend any time in the garden.

The area where I live was settled by Welsh Quakers. We have many Welsh place names such as Tredyffrin, Uwchlan, Bryn Mawr, Llanerch and Cynwyd.

I was in Paris at this time a couple years ago and it was sunny but nippy. I saw on the news that they are just freezing there now. My condolences to you enduring snow and freezing weather, two of my least favorite things.

For the past month I've been moving from climate to climate. When I left home the winter Kona winds were blowing. They are never as cold as continental winds, but visitors to the Islands find them surprising when all they expect is balmy temperatures and gently rustling fronds.

I made it to northern Arizona just in time for a snowfall, which I quite enjoyed, not having seen snow in a while. It was a light dusting, melted by the afternoon, and the weather then turned luscious -- I love deserts in the winter. However, a week or so later I was in Colorado when a blizzard hit. I decided -- or rather my poor old knees decided for me -- that I am not really fond of lingering snow. I headed south, but the blue northern followed me and caught up with me in the Texas Panhandle...Amarillo was a mess. I got to my brother's house near Houston to find the redbuds and dogwoods blooming and the azaleas were ready to burst (they did a few days later). My brother had already planted his spring garden and had good-sized tomatoes on his patio pot plants. We were lolling on his patio, smelling the jasmine waft by; but during the night the wind that had followed me from Colorado across Texas arrived, snarling and howling. The temperature dropped from the 80s F to the high 30s. Brother was frantic over his tomatoes which we hauled into the garage. But the temp bottomed out at 34 F so the tomatoes would've been fine if we had left them outside.

I can't decide which is worse, bone cold or boiling hot. Each produces its own kind of hell. I actually worry more about my brother in the heat of southeast Texas summers. In that part of the world heat kills more of the elderly and people in fragile health. However, air-conditioning is not subsidized like heating is and probably never will be.

Despite flowers blooming and new leaves on trees, our temps for this part of the Carolina Low Country are way below what they should normally be at this time of the year. We had a few mild days in February, but winter is truly hanging on far longer than usual this year. No snow, but temps do get down to freezing at night often. The typical daytime temperature in late March ought to be 72, the experts tell us. But we are lucky if we get above 55 in the daytime. And the winds are cutting and bone-chilling.

I do appreciate my cosy, warm digs, as I moved from a chilly, drafty old house in VA with a dysfunctional furnace and no central a.c.

To borrow dedtired's phrase, it is "sunny but nippy" here in the Niagara region of Ontario. There is virtually no snow left. The ground is not nearly was wet as should be at this time of the year. Our area has seen a dramatic reduction in the amount of rain we normally receive. It is a very worrying topic as I live in an area where agriculture is a significant part of the local economy. It is so sunny and hot during the summer, that my flowers looked like faded dust rags all summer long, despite being watered about every 3-4 days. They sprang back to live in September but I only had a few weeks to enjoy them before losing them to cold temperatures and shorter days.

I was visiting a local cemetery during the worst of the drought last summer, and was shocked to see great cracks opening up in the ground. Very disturbing.

Here in Maine we expect winter to hang on for a long time but last week's 12-inch snowfall was not really welcome. It has been much colder than normal and while I am quite warm in my cozy flat I am dismayed when I look at my heating bill. I don't make more money in the winter! And I had hoped for a letup by now. Next week, possibly.

My thermostat is set at 62F, hardly excessive, but I go through $300-$400 of propane during the cold months. Also I have a wood stove, luckily the wood is supplied by my landlord. Still, it is difficult.

Cold in Kentucky, too. Except for a very few warmer days, our highs have been low 40s and lows upper 20s to low 30s. I only have Lenten Roses and daffodils blooming. The poor daffs stand up in the day time, but they are drooped with frost in the mornings. We have had snow showers the past two days with a little on the grass but no accumulation; however, just a few miles in any direction, they have had 2 to 4 inches. It's weird, and everywhere you go people are asking if it will ever be spring.

This week starts the Cherry Blossom festival here in DC, but this is what we woke up to yesterday morning! My poor crocus! Only a few of the daffodils had started blooming though. And now of course, today the sun shone and all the snow has gone.

It seems as though this prolonged 'cold spell' is hitting most of us in the Northern hemisphere.
Dido, I envy you your warm and 'sheltered' accommodation as I am heartily fed-up with chopping kindling for the fire, cleaning ash from the grate, hauling coal and logs from the wood pile etc. It really can ruin a girl's hands!
Siobhan, I think we must have spent a small fortune on different forms of heating this year and I haven't even checked the paid-on-line electricity bill. Half a ton of coal at ã6.50 a half cwt., gallons of heating oil (which is now measured in litres at nearly 70 pence a litre . . . and I can never convert to 'Imperial') and we are on our second tank of the stuff, a 'load' of ash logs, which burn well but too fast and propane for cooking . . . and the oven 'blew up' a couple of weeks ago. I don't know how the DH avoided instant death as the flames shot right up his front followed by the 'blast' that lifted the ceiling, blew off the window catches and threw millions of bits of glass about. I swear there must be some sort of Methodist Guardian Angel that was looking out for him; the only thing damaged were his singed socks. It sounded as though a bomb had gone off.
Thank goodness for sturdy Victorian buildings. I think if this had been a 'modern' house the roof would have been taken off.
And the insurance has finally paid up so we can cook again. ;-)

Frieda, John is amazed that tomatoes are so far advanced, especially when night time temps drop so low. He reckons they really like nothing below about 55F and sulk if there are any fluctuations in temps . . . or they certainly do over here, where they almost never ripen before July.

Goodness veer, I am so glad your DH is unharmed! That must have been quite a scare!

I'm afraid to even think about tomatoes. Too far in the future.

Goodness veer, I am so glad your DH is unharmed! That must have been quite a scare!

I'm afraid to even think about tomatoes. Too far in the future.

Explosion sounds horrendous, Vee! John was so lucky.

Oh my goodness, Veer. That story could have had a very unhappy ending. I did something similar trying to relight a gas furnace. I didn't realize the gas had built up and-- wham! A fireball. Thankfully, I was sort of off to the side and the dryer took the brunt of it. I ended up with ashes for eyebrows.

Mercy! Vee, I'm so glad 'the bomb' only damaged your house.

Brother says to tell John that tomatoes in southeast Texas are planted in late January or the first of February at the latest. They bloom and start producing in early to mid-March. By June, when the daytime temps are in the 90s or 100s and at night when it seldom gets below 80F, the blooms will no longer set, thus few tomatoes in June and none in July, August, and September. When the temps cool in October, they will resume blooming and some years will make tomatoes until mid-December when it finally gets too cold for 'em. He also says (which I did not know) that tomatoes are perennials in south Texas and Mexico (other places as well), and they don't have to be replanted annually. However, most people treat them as annuals because the old plants can look very ratty if not properly pruned and cared for (watered, fertilized, protected from frost, etc).

The only thing I've known about tomatoes is I like to eat them, but Brother has grown tomatoes for decades and always has many more than he can ever eat.
He loads me up with his home-canned salsas (mild, medium, hot), stewed tomatoes, tomato relish, and homemade tomato ketchup. I distribute his work to various relatives and friends during my mainland peregrinations and I ship the rest home.

I hope England warms up, the winds calm, and the ground 'de-soggifies' soon. I've been hearing of the situation from my Yorkshire mates, too.

Vee, I did something stupid years ago, poured kerosene on a boiler fire which I thought had gone out. A blast of heat came through the small door and sizzled the hairs on my arms. I ran out to the front steps and called to my neighbour who was digging in his garden "Am I on fire?"
He was a laconic man "No." he answered and resumed digging. He never even asked me why I thought I might have been!

Oh, my, Vee. I'm glad John is all right. It sounds like my story of cooking breakfast in my youth when I lit a match to heat the oven for my biscuits when the gas was already on.

Thanks for your many 'gas-related' experiences. I have always lived in properties where cooking by gas was the norm and this was the first trouble experienced . . . though I do remember in student 'digs' days where my landlady had a very bad habit of turning on the gas to her ancient stove and then wandering off to do something else such as answer the phone, before lighting it. I came back one day to find her looking very singed round the edges.

Frieda many thanks for the tom treatise. John claims there is really little point in trying to grow them here; he just enjoys the challenge and the boughten varieties are SO tasteless and chemical laden and come from acres of greenhouses in Holland and Spain.
Still on the crops theme. My US cousin, a keen VA mountain gardener, is trying to interest us in the three sister Indian method of growing corn, squash and beans. This is very difficult in our climate as corn (first grown in pots) and squash ditto, like it much hotter than your temps reach (70F is a HOT day in the UK) and beans runner/green/string do fine but only South of Yorkshire. We also have an unreliable amount of Autumn sunshine for ripening produce.
Does this method work State-wide (or in Aus)?
And talking of sunshine . .. we had some for a couple of hours yesterday and today (the first rays since 18 March). No wonder we all look like pale shivering slugs. :-(

It has been quite warm here in South Australia, with a day of 33ðC last week, but it has been a very dry year so far, and the farmers will be hoping for more rain soon.
Autumn is not very noticeable in Aus, as the local trees and shrubs are all non-deciduous. It was one of the things I most noticed when we lived in Wales - I woke up one morning and discovered there was a house across the way that I couldn't see until all the leaves dropped off the trees!
I have been watching the news stories about the snow in the UK and hoping all my friends there are OK.
Vee, glad to here your DH is alive and well. We have gas for our hob, although the oven is electric, and hot water is gas also, but we have never (touch wood) had any trouble.

Vee, yes, the "three sisters" method of growing those 3 vegetables is well known in the US, as the Native Americans actually taught this to the early settlers, espec. in Virginia. From that derives the Native American vegetable dish of "Succatosh."

For too many years I dealt with an old, substandard gas furnace. Just the thought of what could happen used to scare me. Now that I've relocated, thankfully, I am not dealing with that issue. Gas is the preferred method of stove cooking, (even temps). Also unaffected by power outages, when hurricanes hit. However, I've always had electric stoves.

Vee, you could do the 'dead fish' routine with the three sisters/milpa method. Go down to your local stream and catch a mess of small fish; then let 'em croak naturally. Bring the fish back to your field/plot; dig some holes several feet apart; plop a fish in; drop a maize kernel or two/three on top of the fish, cover with dirt; and about eight inches out from the fish-maize center poke some seed-beans into the soil. Then around the circumference, plant some squash seeds. Give all a good watering, then forget until they start coming up. This is the time-honored method in the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central America. (If you can't get fish, you can use other rotten things.)

The Native Americans discovered the secret of nitrogen-fixing the soil (beans do that) and combining foods that provide a complete protein. When eaten individually, uncombined, they are incomplete and deficient in vitamins. Isn't it amazing how people learned to do this intuitively?

Maize (sweet corn) is quite finicky to grow outside its natural habitat. It needs water at just the right time (early), lots of sunshine, and a good long spell of dry weather for ripening. I'm not surprised that it doesn't do well in the UK. In Iowa where I grew up, corn is king, hybridized to freakish dimensions (some ears are 12-18 inches long). Of course in Iowa the commercial farmers don't bother with the milpa method.

I've meant to ask you, Vee: Can you grow melons in your part of England? My Pickering pals can't, but I have an online friend in Cornwall who can. The south coast of Cornwall is practically Mediterranean, though, compared to most of England.

This is off-topic of the wind, I know, but it is weather related. :-)

Frieda, it is very difficult to grow melons unless in a big heated greenhouse. Squash/pumpkins are also tricky to grow and need care to start them off under 'protection' and will only flourish during July and August. DH says that butternut squash are the only variety on general sale . . .but pumpkins are more popular as Halloween is gradually becoming something of an 'event'.
Also most English people wouldn't have a clue what to do with a squash once they had bought it!
The melons and peaches sold here are usually tasteless with NO sweetness having been picked while still green and then never properly ripening.
We also find that oranges, formally sold around Christmas/January and now available all year round are usually dry and pithy. I would love to know the vitamin content of such a horrible piece of fruit. Is this a problem everywhere?

And Frieda, just off to catch me a few fish. Salmon used to be the local delicacy but now the Rivers Wye and Severn have become virtually salmon free perhaps I will net a few elvers . . . although they are no longer found in their millions.

Vee, one of my English landladies in the 1970s was quite proud of the courgettes (zucchini) she grew in her back garden in London! The '70s must have been unusually warm and dry (I seem to remember they were but I can't swear to it), because I had to warn her to watch out or the little devils would take over. She didn't believe me, but sure enough I came home after a few weeks in France to find baskets of zucchini all over the house and my landlady miffed that she couldn't give them away to anyone and everyone she accosted. She grew larger marrows too, and treated me with a gigantic one with bread and mushroom farci). I was the only one of her tenants who appreciated her effort, I think.

Whoa, that's a shame about the salmon. They used to have lots in the rivers of Brittany, too; but the last I heard they were sparse, although the Department powers were trying to reestablish them. Somebody got the idea to ship salmon to the Kerguelen Archipelago, just about the most isolated islands in the Indian Ocean. That was in the early 1980s, but the salmon introduced there actually started coming 'home' to Kerguelen. I haven't kept up with the experiment so don't know if the antipodean salmon are still doing it. Anyway, I wonder why the Severn/Wye salmon haven't been reestablished...must not be a priority.

I had eel pie, not knowing what it was, and thought it was quite tasty. I don't mind the elvers but the adults are rather scary. I can just imagine you with your net and creel. :-)

We in the US are quite spoilt with good citrus, with three prime citrus-growing locales (California, south Texas, Florida). We won't put up with lousy fruit unless there's been a horribly devastating freeze (thankfully rare). I'm especially fond of Texas Ruby Red grapefruits from 'the Valley' of the Rio Grande. The season for them runs from October through March. I got to Texas at the tail end, but my ever thoughtful brother got a twenty-pound bag for me so I've had a grapefruit for breakfast everyday for the past week.

Where is the citrus you get in England grown? I've had Spanish oranges and can't say I've been impressed, but Spanish lemons seemed all right.

You should know better, Vee, than get me started on food and food production.

Frieda, our citrus fruit comes from Spain and Israel. Apparently Spanish oranges are only picked around the New Year and the rest are just let to fall off the trees and rot; perhaps not worth the effort.
Courgettes certainly can grow to a terrible size, usually when your back is turned. I have unpleasant memories of marrows. Boiled to death and served with white sauce; utterly tasteless.

Re salmon/elvers (baby eels) No-one seems to know why the stocks have gone so low, it seems to be world-wide.
In the '70's I remember local fishermen waiting at the railway station with boxes of salmon to be sent up to London. Today there are almost none of these old boys left. It is/was an extremely dangerous trade as the Severn tides are the second highest in the world (after the Bay of Fundy) and every year people are drowned . . .even the 'old hands'.
There used to be a tradition among a very few hardy families on both the Welsh and the English side of the estuary to 'mud fish'. Using a simple 'sledge' which they pushed through the mud flats at low tide they would pick up any stray fish left in pools and collect salmon caught in their lengths of putchers (long narrow cages made of willow and set out across the mud to trap the fish). It was essential to know the shallows, pools and time of the tide down to the last minute.
Below is a clip of an old Welsh chap who worked this way. You get a good idea of the remoteness of the estuary. 'Our' part of the river is far less intimidating . . .though I wouldn't want to go paddling in it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mud Fishing

Dido, re free heating, I remember when I lived in the UK in the late nineties, there was a 200 pound grant for heating for pensioners and a loading for a wind-chill factor as well. Warmth is so important in the Northern hemisphere as is having cool airconditioning in the Southern one.
My sister, who lives in Sussex told me that her boiler broke down just before Easter and her flat got cold very quickly. Luckily the Council sent a repairman who was able to mend it or she would have become ill as she has a problem with the cold and even used to faint in Winter when she was a child!
I suggested she get a small electric fire for emergencies as she gave her gas-fired heaters away when she moved to a centrally heated place.

Ann, the ã200 heating grant is still given to pensioners. Apparently houses in the UK are the least well designed/provided with insulation to deal with winter cold and damp of anywhere is Europe.
There is now a totally impractical plan known as the 'Green Deal' whereby householders can borrow money against your property to add double-glazing, cavity wall insulation, solar panels etc to their properties. Of course the total amount it would cost can virtually never be recouped from the original payout.
In the fantasy world of renewable energy the cost of these schemes is met from a vast hike in our electricity/gas bills . . . and don't get me started on wind farms . . . possibly one of the costliest, ugliest, impractical ways to produce electricity . . .where the only person to benefit is the person who erects the turbine and sells any electricity it produces back to the power company and is paid well over the odds ( from our bills of course) for so doing.
We have one such local entrepreneur who is hoping to do this very thing about half a mile from our village and then grow a 'wind farm' all the way up this unique estuary landscape. ;-( ;-(

Here is a link that might be useful: John's Turbine Map