February 2024 seems unlikely to repeat the weather of last year’s special month, when little rain fell, and we were blessed with many dry days and much sunshine. The first nine days of the month have been under mainly grey skies, with rain or drizzle every day.

Still, it has been very mild, which has allowed our hardy honey bees to become active and visit the Daphne bholua flowers and any open snowdrops, which are both remarkably tolerant of wet conditions. Sadly the Crocus fare much less well, with flowers rarely opening, and as they continue to grow, flopping over and failing.

The frogs have enjoyed a bumper early spawning season, largely completed on February 3rd/4th: as early as I can recall. If you watch this video, below, you’ll hear the sound of an owl taking a frog from the pond’s surface in the early evening drizzle – a special experience for me as I was crouching in the dark, with just a torch beam on the frogs as the owl struck a few feet away, and shocked the life out of me, and the frog chorus.

However, as the month progressed, we’re even more delighted to have snowdrops, now, in most parts of the garden. They lift the spirits, whatever the weather.

Some Camellia flowers are already opening, which is early for us, and a brief spell of sunshine on the 7th, allowed me to take some more pleasing photos of how the garden looks at this time of the year.

Hazel catkins have also already opened, with purple alder flowers not far behind. Spring is springing, ridiculously early.

The theme of generally mild, grey and wet weather kept going right to the end of the month. However the very few frosts allowed bees to be active in between the rain showers, and the Camellia flowers to escape largely undamaged.

The Daphne bholua have given us months of fantastic scent, despite the wet, and even once the flowers fall, they retain their charm for weeks.

But it was a soggy time for the Crocus, with few occasions for bees to pollinate them

With just 1 dry day in the whole of February, only 3 light frosts to minus 2.5 degrees C, and an eventual total of 273.4 mm of rain.

At least the lack of hard frosts meant it was a very successful year for emerging tadpoles, and whilst filming them and an unusual spiky caddis case in the upper pond, I had my first known sighting of springtails – in action on the pond surface in double figure temperatures, as shown in the video below, filmed in mid-February 17th.

On a rare dry sunny day, we managed to install a replacement base for one of our first wooden mushrooms, very kindly made for us by Fiona’s brother. We reckoned when I shaped these features with my chainsaw back in 2011, they’d decay at about the same rate as us, the gardeners. This seems to be the case!

The PV inverter readout confirms just how poor the light levels have been for much of the month, with a reading of just 115KWH – Last year was 188.8 KWH

The Met Office reports for February and the whole winter confirm our findings here – it’s been the mildest February ever on record, with mean daily temperatures a whopping 2.4 degrees C above the 30-year average, at 6.9 degrees C.  44.2 hours of sunshine – just 64% of the 30-year average and the national average of 205.8mm, 171% of the 30-year average.

The series of recent February rainfall totals show that very wet months seem to be becoming the norm: 273mm in 2024, 31.2 mm in 2023, 254mm in 2022, 354mm in 2021 and 357 mm in 2020. ‘Just’ 135mm in 2019 which was our sunniest February ever. And a mere 103 mm in 2018, with 149 mm in 2017.

Sadly March looks set to follow in a similar rut!