Wild and wacky weather this Spring

We are heading for Autumn/Fall, and the weather is swinging between freezing and boiling hot! I so need a decent air conditioner!

We seem to be awfully lucky at avoiding the bad weather where I live! I got up sunday and yes we had snow, but it was just on the rooftops, the sun was shining and by about 10.30am it had gone. Since then we have just had lovely sunshine although when the sun goes in or goes down it goes mighty cool!! I have no plants or things for the garden as we are having it all done in June and so I will leave anything like that until then or until next year now.

I'd organised to go sailing with a friend during the balmy days of last week when I mowed the lawns in shirt sleeves, a bit of weeding and a bit of turfing where my dog had widdled and killed the grass and then emptied and turned over my 2007 compost heap into the empty bay. Sweating like a pig! Then Sunday I drove through a blizzard to the boat and had a nice sail up the river all wrapped up like Michelin Man. 'Mad dogs and Englishmen, trala laaa!

I was stunned when I opened the curtains on Sunday morning to see the host of golden daffodils bent and broken under the weight of the snow. I have decided to put off any further work in the garden until the end of the month now

I'm really annoyed at how cold it is because I turned off my electric storage heaters as I thought it was getting warmer and now I've had to turn them back on again. Me and my boy friend are arguing about who's going to go to the shop because it's so cold outside, it's crazy the weathers like this in April. I bet come summer there will be a hosepipe ban because there hasn't been enough rain, though from our perspective it hasn't stopped. I'm growing some chilli's and some catnip on my kitchen windowsill this year I don't have a garden anymore soi just have to grow things indoors in pots, so in that respect the weather hasn't effected me too badly at least.

I am on the south coast of England and yesterday morning I was at my laptop with the windows open. I closed them when hailstones began to fall and if I had not closed the window I would have had a snowdrift in my kitchen because the windows were soon white with snow and I could not see out. Snow is rare in this part of the country and some local children have never had the opportunity to throw a snowball or build a snowman. When I went out I saw hundreds of snowmen of all shapes and sizes across the common. I could even see snow on the hills of the Isle of Wight. Most of the snow vanished by the afternoon but I suggest you do no not plant out your seedlings yet. You will need to wait for the wind to stop blowing from the arctic north.

Luckily I had made no plans for yesterday other than cooking dinner and watching the Grand Prix else if I had planned a day in the garden wouldn't have been amused either. My daughter loves snow and phoned first thing to say its snowing, my sister-in-law had never ever seen snow as she comes from Thailand and was all excited by it too. We are in Devon and other than a small flurry escaped it here. It blankets everything though and makes the world look pretty when it does settle. Hope you get chance to sort your tomatoes and cucumbers next weekend. Ellie :D

I am so behind with my garden stuff this year. I don't grow tomatoes anymore since the great blight of 2003 - I tried to grow 200 plants and 195 got blight! But yesterday I took my daughter back to university and drove through blizzards on the M25! I leave all that hard weather to you chaps "oop North", we southern softies like it warm and it isn't playing fair!! LOL