Winter Blues?

Who says that the skies are always grey in the UK Winter? Look at this, it's bright, sunny and almost cloudless here in Fleet!

That tree is my Bronze Maple. In its current leafless state you can clearly see its structure. It has divided into two main trunks about 10 feet above ground level. But the most interesting feature is the huge number of small branches that has appeared at the points where the main branches were trimmed earlier this year. It will have vast numbers of leaves next year! Oh Goody, that probably means I'll need to buy another compost bin to accommodate them when they fall.

The weather here is so (nearly) sub-tropical, that my Scotch Bonnet chilli plant ("rescued" from the Garden Centre for a mere 50p, you'll recall) is really thriving! Actually it's growing indoors, and it has the full warmth of the radiator right underneath where it lives on the Dining Room windowsill.  It looks pretty happy with life. So much so that it is producing lots of new leaves and shoots:

There are even a few flowers forming, though I don't expect any of them to set fruit just now.

If we don't get some really Wintery weather soon, I'm likely to have Crocus bulbs flowering before Christmas:



It's not that I really want it to be cold and grey; it's just that I want seasonality. These days our weather seems much more jumbled-up than I ever remember it being. Spring seems to be confused with Autumn, and you get Winter weather in July. This makes gardening even more of a challenge than it ever was before.