December began with a wonderful clear sunrise and another hard frost – only the second of the season, after the first on November 25th.

The autumn has been generally a poor one for light or sunrises, so the frosty start was particularly welcome.

The cold weather has seen many berries disappearing from trees, and this was the first time I’d noticed a blackbird picking off the Euonymus berries

I had a fabulous woodcock-watching session, just up from the back door, as about a dozen flew past in around 15 minutes.

The following night saw temperatures drop to minus 10 degrees C behind the house in the morning

As the month progressed, there were no more frosts, though occasional days with brightness, and some more glorious sunrises, along with a brief, wet snow flurry. Falling onto such hard, frozen ground this presented interesting slushy conditions for a couple of days before the ground had thawed.

Interesting sightings were an overflying heron, and then early in the month a couple of honey bees visiting the very few snowdrops which had already opened in the tyre garden, on a day when the winds were light, and sunshine provided sufficient warmth for our most hardy honey bee colony to send out scouts, at about 6 degrees C. The snowdrop in question is the appropriately named cultivar G.elwesii ‘Gabriel’

As the berries began to disappear from the garden, those on Skimmia ‘Red Ruth’ proved to be very valuable, since the birds always seem to leave these alone.

Fortunately, cloud cover broke up through the day on December 13th so with the moon absent this year, we were both able to wrap up and in completely still conditions enjoy a wonderful display from the Geminid meteor shower, from our raked seats pointing due South. Unlike last year when I had to shelter from a biting wind and minus 7 degrees C, this time the temperatures stayed above freezing, and for once Fiona saw a few. I reckon I notched up between 15 and 20 over 2 nights. One of the really special Gelli Uchaf moments. Sadly my brilliant bridge camera seems to struggle with ever capturing such events – at least in my hands. Suffice it to say that at least 2 of the shooters had me exclaiming out loud. Whooaah! The ‘star’, brighter than any in the sky, sped for a couple of seconds leaving an obvious faint trail in its wake. We both realise that for all sorts of reasons, the occasions when we might be able to watch such events might be quite limited in the future, which made it an even more special watch.

From then on the rest of the month played out in the same grey, (and sometimes pink or yellow grey), wet and occasionally very windy mode. Culminating in Storm Gerrit, on the 28th which briefly took out our power supply and brought us over 50 mm of rain in 36 hours. Requiring a few sessions clearing drainage channels and culverts down our access track, as well as general debris clearance.

Amazingly a heron was still looking for food in our swollen stream, after the water and wind had subsided a little.

By then we’d had our first daffodil flower open on Christmas Eve, as well as 25 different snowdrop cultivars, primroses, our first Crocus ‘Firefly’, Cyclamen coum and many Daphne bholua flowers, and a caterpillar on the wall outside the back door.This reflects the warmest start to winter we can recall, with no more frosts throughout the month apart from those very early 2 nights, and just 2 dry days, and the most consistently wet second half to a year we’ve ‘enjoyed’ here, with 1452 mm of rain since July. Equally there were few photographic windows, and fewer dramatic morning sunrises than we often witness during the month. At last on the 29th, the skies cleared in late afternoon for some wonderful light, wind surfing kites, and a dozen woodcock at dusk. Brilliant! 

But the weather hadn’t finished with us for 2023, with 45 mm of rain falling on the 30th and overnight into New Year’s Eve, causing one of the worst brief flooding episodes we can recall in our lower meadow. The final total for the year of 2314.25mm was the highest we’ve ever recorded here, skewed massively towards the second half of the year: January through June produced “just” 861.8mm. The month’s PV reading of 36.6 KWH was typically low, though not as bad as 2015’s total of just 22 KWH, and the annual inverter record of 3,330 KWH was slightly down on our usual, remarkably stable reading of about 3400 KWH. But was saved by the exceptionally sunny first half of the year. From ‘Lotusland’s’ glorious May peak, it was downhill all the way!