2016 begins with some pretty impressive new records. Maximum rainfall levels across many areas of the UK have been smashed, not just broken, and any readers in the UK will no doubt have followed the flood devastation images, (if they had TV or internet access – no such luck here until recently) as the fall out from Atlantic storms, driven up from the South West have pounded the North West, North East and Scotland.

Bridges have collapsed, castles have teetered, homes have been evacuated, possessions trashed, livestock drowned and businesses wrecked. Not so many benign Christmas Eve rainbows around in these regions I guess, with crocks of gold inside the house.

Was it coincidence, that this year was the first one that the Met Office decided to name individual approaching storms, in the style of the American hurricane season? Did they have an inkling of what was in store for us, when this decision was taken? If not, how prescient. Actually, to give them credit, back in the autumn, they did forecast a milder and wetter than average start to winter, with a sting in the tail of very cold weather towards winter’s end. We wait to see on this one, but storms ‘Desmond’ and ‘Frank’ will be remembered for a long time in those parts of the UK which really suffered. Or at least until rainfall totals are surpassed again. And this is the thought that I’m left with after our own weather experiences this winter.

The rainfall total hasn’t just been exceeded a bit, but the previous maximum has been well and truly smashed. A veritable Bannister 3 minute mile performance. Our earlier Gelli monthly record high of 411mm in December 2013 (you’ll perhaps remember, that 2013 was the wettest winter ever, in Wales), was eclipsed by this December’s total of 534.5 mm. And we’ve now gone from November 1st, with only one 24 hour period without any rain. And light levels barely registering on our PV system.Daily rainfall totals have, so far, been within our normal maximum range, with a peak of 49 mm towards the end of December. However, it’s the cumulative impact which can still be devastating, once ground becomes saturated. For the first time ever, between Christmas and New Year, our benign stream, the Afon Melinddwr (‘mill water’), which has its source barely a mile away, became a raging torrent which topped the four foot bank and spewed debris in a long trail over our lower meadow. We’re certainly grateful that the first folk who tried to tame this land, opted to build their long house high up the hillside, away from the valley bottom.

What would the effects have been around here, if we’d had the 341 mm which fell in 24 hours in the Lake District as storm ‘Desmond’ passed through? That would certainly have been a ‘red sky in the morning, shepherds take warning‘ day, as it was indeed today, January 13th.

An inconceivable prospect?

I’m no longer so sure. We certainly have the topography and position of rising land mass, in Mynydd Llanllwni and Mynydd Llanybydder to catch the warm moisture laden air rushing in from the Atlantic, and force it to rise and cool over these first mountains in its path.

Which brings me onto my final point to ponder. Much is always made, around this time of the year, with the Las Vegas consumer electronics show just finished, about disruptive new technologies, and the impact that they might have on existing businesses and the way our modern society works. (Click here for some selected ideas from this year’s show – the GoSun Stove – a solar powered grill looks fun. Click here for more. Pity there’s not a lot of sunshine around here right now though).

But our Prime Minister has recently highlighted the £2.0 billion earmarked for flood defences for the whole of the UK for the next 5 years. It seems to me that government needs to wake up to the reality of the disruptive potential of extreme weather events, and begin to plan and think more creatively. No doubt this won’t happen until the Thames barrier is topped and the streets of London are underwater.

What price then the disruptive technology of an uber app to get a taxi to where you stand, within 3 minutes? A discussion with our son, a civil engineer working in flood management and sewage systems, centring on why the government isn’t making flood defences a higher priority, resulted in a simple explanation. There just isn’t enough money to design systems to cope with such extreme rainfall. Maybe towns should move up?

For more detail on the rainfall data for several recording stations in the UK for December, and how our own totals above compare with this mix, click here. And click here for a discussion by the Met Office’s Chief Scientist, Professor Dame Julia Slingo, as to why the UK has been affected by the severe weather systems seen so far this winter.

As keen gardeners living in a high rainfall region, we’re used to having to do things a bit differently to the mainstream (Sorry). For example, snowdrops Galanthus ‘Galatea’ and ‘Pride ‘o’ the Mill’ above, and species Galanthus rizehensis below, are some of the 23 types ‘in flower’, by which I mean the buds are like this, at the turn of the year in 2016 – another record. And many are growing in our retired matrix garden – see later.Reading a lovely article recently about the wonderful Great Dixter garden in Sussex, I noticed that their annual rainfall is about 75 cm – compared to nearer 200 cm here. One critical difference the high rainfall makes, is that we always aim to cut back most of our herbaceous perennials early in autumn. Otherwise, they decay to wet sludge – we rarely get the often mentioned benefits, of frosty seed heads to admire in mid-winter. But in spite of starting in early October this year, there were still some areas to complete, as we headed into late November, and by then the ground was already becoming saturated. So next year, we’ll begin even earlier. Also, the annual harvesting of fallen autumn leaves from along our green lane, using our Li-ion lawn mower, was never possible.

They fell, wet, and have stayed wet, waiting for a chance to shovel them up.

Fortunately, most of our early spring bulbs and corms are incredibly tolerant of even higher rainfall, coming from mountainous regions where annual rainfall often exceeds our high totals, providing that they have a drier summer, and that the ground is reasonably free draining. But even this latter point doesn’t seem to apply with some snowdrop cultivars, where local ‘naturalised’ clumps will seed and spill over into sodden ditches at the base of banks. A useful trait for a section of the garden, below, often flooded by a drain overflow from our yard.

So as Christmas Day dawned, or more accurately deluged, with another 34 mm, we struck out with umbrellas for a walk in the nearby Brechfa Forest. We took a new turn down, off the forestry track, and on, into a wonderful green lane-come bridleway-come stream. This was narrow and steep enough, and with such moss and fern carpeted banks, that we really marvelled at the rigours of travelling it, on a regular basis, in years gone by. Half way down, we reached a clearing between towering firs, with a few mature deciduous trees standing sentinel, wrapped and trapped in the low light levels and moss festoons. And then incongruously, a spindly and obviously very old shrubby bush, or even small tree, with little foliage remaining on its mossy boughs.The leaves looked like Box (but larger), or Cotoneaster perhaps? No hint of any fruit or flowers to aid its identification, but growing amongst a few low moss covered stone walls, it seemed to hint at a former dwelling. Much of the Brechfa Forest was created after the compulsory purchase of farmland during the 1930’s. Click here for much more detail on how this came to be established, and the huge impact it had on the existing upland farming community which previously called this wonderful place, home.

On a return visit a few days later we spotted the earlier dwelling, missed on our first trip, and blending so well into its setting. Abandoned to the all-pervading, wet greenery. No snowdrops were evident – I’ve found few really close by, so when the rain briefly eased, we headed down to the National Botanic Gardens of Wales (NBGW) to see whether any of theirs’ were blooming yet.Actually, there were very few even obvious as shoot noses, though amazingly these Marsh marigolds, or Kingcups, Caltha paulustis, by the lakeside were already flowering.Always a delight to visit, entrance to the garden is free to everyone (a minimal charge for event weekends) until the end of January, so it’s worth arranging to get there soon, if you can.They even have a planned snowdrop day on January 31st. And if you can visit, do call in at the courtyard gallery to see the wonderful range of artwork on display, produced by a group of different artist students from the University of Wales. Inspiring stuff.

There were few other visitors either, with a chilly, penetrating wind. But the sun shone, and as we returned via the Broad Walk, it became perfectly positioned to illuminate the water feature at the entrance, through the hole in the circular roof.

The NBGW is established on the site of another major Welsh estate from the late 1700’s, Middleton Hall, although the original mansion no longer exists. For a long time abandoned, a millenium project to create a new National Botanic Garden for Wales began a process of regeneration, and there are now grand plans to recreate the landscape features of the estate in its Regency heyday, with a necklace of lakes extending to the South and East. Click here fore more details and images showing how, at the time, it was one of the premier landscaped gardens in the UK.

You may gather from this post, that at last we have had internet connectivity restored. A completely new satellite system had to be requested, (obviously at our expense, and request, since our satellite service provider was completely disinterested in getting us back on line). We’re very grateful to the marvellous satellite expert Craig, for doing it speedily and efficiently. Craig works for a subcontracting satellite installation company, and has his own sky diving blog (which you can see here), and so couldn’t imagine that we’d been without any access for so long, from his first visit in early November. When he’d confirmed that the old dish was still correctly aligned, and that the problem lay elsewhere in the system.This disconnect from what was going on in the world was even worse, since our mobile frequently has no signal, and even our portable land line phone got taken out in early January by a near overhead lightning strike – in spite of surge protectors.

A dramatic pop and blue light as the fuse blew, perhaps protected us from the fate of neighbours a few years back, when the lightning nipped down the phone wire, into the electrical circuitry through just such a portable phone, and blew most of the circuitry and nearly burned the house down.

Still it was reassuring to receive a round robin email to all customers, from Beyond SL our ISP, just 4 days after restoration of service, beginning:

“At Satellite Internet, delivering the highest customer satisfaction is really important to us. That’s why we’re always looking for ways in which to improve our levels of service to you, our customer and to provide you with the best possible user experience when using our internet connectivity.”

Smile.

8 weeks of grief and stress, stacks of non returned calls, 2 dud replacement modems, 5 different staff, 2 requests for us to realign a correctly aligned dish, numerous email messages, apparently sent to us, in spite of requests for phone calls – hang on, we didn’t have internet, guys? Get it? And a complete inability to ever be able to get talk to whoever is the boss – I still don’t know.

And neither did many of the staff, it seems.

Yep, that sounds like customer satisfaction is right up there on their list of priorities. Such a shame that real competition doesn’t seem to thrive in the communications market for rural customers.

Fortunately, the plants have sensed our mood, and come to our rescue. Although we had to leave ‘Robert’ outside. Mrs Macnamara and Jacqueline Postill were able to join us at the table for Christmas Day as appealing dinner guests.While outside, the Eyelash cup fungus, Scutellinia scutellata, never before seen here, or perhaps not sufficiently mascara’d to be obvious, seemed to revel in her festive colours.