Saturday, February 21
Natural Portents. Or are we all doomed?
Snowdrops, their white capped heads drooping, poke shyly through the dead leaves beneath the aging oak tree in my garden.
Alongside the green blades of daffodils, visible since late December, show signs of rapidly increasing growth as the sun's warmth & longer daylight hours beckon.
Earlier today I was in the New Forest near Burley, roaming boggy ground (as in very very boggy) in an infrequently visited area.
Along the route I short-cut across a small footbridge to avoid the worst of the muddy terrain.
Beneath my feet frog spawn. Not just a few clumps. A mass of spawn measuring a couple of metres wide, a meter deep and about half a metre deep.
That will be an enormous amount of frogs if those tadpoles ever make it through to maturity.
I'm not too sure what this portent from Nature indicates for the coming summer conditions.
But whatever it is ....... Think Big.Labels: nature, New Forest
Comments:
Hmm... looks like it could be a hot summer. There's a possible (but as yet unproven) link between the 11-year sunspot cycle and the weather, and various records seem to indicate an approximate 11-year cycle of high summer temperatures. Remember the long, hot summer of '76? Well, '87 and '98 were quite hot too, so who's to say that '09 won't keep to the sequence? Maybe those frogs know more than we do!
That looks really strange to me even for the far south of England, after all it was only a couple of weeks ago that we were engulfed in snow and ice.
Our garden pond frogs have only just emerged (Cheshire), which is about average.
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posted by 
: 23/2/09 9:49 am
similarly surprised Geoff at the amount of early flowers i spotted and mentioned in my follow up post at the weekend
mmmhhh, was there not once a plague of frogs? Mind, I am all for it. Would make a nice change for the frogs to hit back, after all, people spend large amounts of money to eat them!
#
posted by : 24/2/09 7:21 pm
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Alongside the green blades of daffodils, visible since late December, show signs of rapidly increasing growth as the sun's warmth & longer daylight hours beckon.
Earlier today I was in the New Forest near Burley, roaming boggy ground (as in very very boggy) in an infrequently visited area.
Along the route I short-cut across a small footbridge to avoid the worst of the muddy terrain.
Beneath my feet frog spawn. Not just a few clumps. A mass of spawn measuring a couple of metres wide, a meter deep and about half a metre deep.
That will be an enormous amount of frogs if those tadpoles ever make it through to maturity.
I'm not too sure what this portent from Nature indicates for the coming summer conditions.
But whatever it is ....... Think Big.
Labels: nature, New Forest
Hmm... looks like it could be a hot summer. There's a possible (but as yet unproven) link between the 11-year sunspot cycle and the weather, and various records seem to indicate an approximate 11-year cycle of high summer temperatures. Remember the long, hot summer of '76? Well, '87 and '98 were quite hot too, so who's to say that '09 won't keep to the sequence? Maybe those frogs know more than we do!
That looks really strange to me even for the far south of England, after all it was only a couple of weeks ago that we were engulfed in snow and ice.
Our garden pond frogs have only just emerged (Cheshire), which is about average.
Our garden pond frogs have only just emerged (Cheshire), which is about average.
#
posted by : 23/2/09 9:49 am
: 23/2/09 9:49 am
similarly surprised Geoff at the amount of early flowers i spotted and mentioned in my follow up post at the weekend
mmmhhh, was there not once a plague of frogs? Mind, I am all for it. Would make a nice change for the frogs to hit back, after all, people spend large amounts of money to eat them!
Post a Comment
#
posted by : 24/2/09 7:21 pm
: 24/2/09 7:21 pm
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