Pond in the 2nd half of January

The beggining of second half of January brought here some snow an temperatures a little bit below 0 C (32F). As I mentioned in the last post from January 16, my garden turned fromm green to white. Next few days were quite windy, litlle bit cold, with a mixture of rain and snow. Beggining of last week welcomed us with the frozen rain that covered everything: vehicles, trees, stairs... But let's go back to January 16. My pond was not frozen that time.

Just after January 20, huge amount of cold air came here from Scandinavia. So we experienced -15 C (5F) by night and -8 C (17.6F) by the day. But we also experienced nice sunny weather!

As it was cold the water in my pond froze and a tiny ice surface appeared. Day by day it was thicker and thicker.

Last few nights and days were not that cold. But it was cloudy and huge amount of snow appeared ewerywhere in my area. Today it's around -7 C (19.40F) but it's very windy. 

We are looking for some warming that is forecasted to come here next week. But even during upcoming weekend it shall be around -3 C (26.6F) which is much better then now. 

There are some fishes living in my pond. They can withstand winter there without any problems. My pond is around 130 cm deep in the deepest point. So they have a kind of a shelter there. I installed a special device which we can call an artificial ice-hole. There is a kind of heating element there and a special pipe to trasport some fresh air (or oxygene) to the pond.

So you can see on a picture above how much snow we have here in the central part of Poland!

I hope that the nxt post will be much more optimistic as the weather is concerned.

Winter has just come

Yesterday it started to snow in the area where I live. But just 2 days ago sunny weather brought some nice and quite warm (as for January) air.

Wednesday morning I recorded +3 C (37,4 F). It was very cloudy and it started to snow around 09.00 AM. Temperature was still above 0 C so the snow disappeared quite quickly.

But in the afternoon temperature dropped below 0 C (32 F). It was snowing the whole day so in the eveningmy garden was totally white.

  

Today in the morning I took my camera to make some pictures of my garden. It looks really nice. It is not that cold, just around 0 C (32 F). Weather forecast say that such kind of weather will last until the end of january. We will see if they are right.

Still waiting for winter

Last few weeks brought here in the central part of Poland some warm air from the south. But weather has just started to change and it's getting colder. It was -2 C (28,4 F) today early morning, just before sunrise. Then we had a very beautiful day with a lot of sunshine.

I always try to find different websites providing proffesional weather forecasts in the net. Most of them forecasted winter would come to Poland the next week. It is not very cold now, there is no snow outside but temperature has just dropped below 0 C (32 F). 

Yestarday I protected my frost hardy palm tree (Trachycarpus Wagnerianus) but I think it is still a little bit too warm to protect other not so hardy plants like aucuba japonica or skimmia japonica. They tolerate temperatures down to -15 or -17 C (5 F to 0 F).

Cold air froze my pond. I found tiny ice coverage there. And fishes swimming just below it.

Today in the afternoon I noticed huge cloud which looked like mountains. This front came from the west and quicly covered beautiful blue sky.

I think that winter with snow and frost will come sooner or later. Be sure that I will inform you about that here on my blog!

Evergreen garden in the beginning of January 2014

Christmas passed by and 2013 is finished. We've just started New Year. There is a winter picture with snow in my calendar but outside of the window it seems that spring is coming here to Poland. We were lucky during Christmas. It was sunny with +12 C (53,6 F). This is not so common for our climate. Every year all the children are waiting for white Christmas. Personally I don't like winter and I hate snow and frost in my area. it is only acceptable in the mountains. But... I live in the central part of Poland and snow and frost are something what we have to face every winter. But the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 has brought here nice, warm and sunny weather.

Lots of evergreen broadleaf plants are still growing or has just woken up to start new season. This is not good because winter will come sooner or later. If plants start to grow even a litle frost can destroy young parts.

Skimmia japonica is ready for blooming. This nice shrub blooms normally in winter but not in Poland! It blooms in Japan, the UK, Benelux or France, but not here! Normaly in my area flowers are destroyed by frost and in spring new stalks appear, now flowers at all!

Euonymus japonicus is still growing. New leaves appeared few days ago.

Mahonia aquifolium is going to bloom very soon.

Roses have new leaves. It's strange but the old ones are still on the shrubs. Normally roses leave their leaves in winter, but this year it hasn't happen.

Buxus sempervirens has also got young and light green leaves.

Even my frost hardy small palm tree is still growing. It is Trachycarpus Wagnerianus and I am not sure if it withstands winter here. We will see.

Weather forecasts say that winter will come here next week. Be sure that I will inform you about that on my blog!