After the mainly dull, damp and grey February, March 2024 roared in with wet snow flurries, a fabulous rainbow, and even some lovely sunshine. The long-range forecast for the rest of the month implied that it wouldn’t continue and that February’s default warm, grey and wet conditions would soon return.

However soggy the garden and landscape are, there are always signs of spring approaching fast, none better than listening to an invisible song thrush serenading from somewhere very close to the front door, for hours on end, as March began in generally mild conditions.

I’m making a determined effort to record and photograph all the different daffodils we now have growing in the garden – over 200 cultivars I guess, but my poor record keeping over the years is making this a huge task, compounded by the lack of good weather for photography. The web page will no doubt be updated at a less busy time, my initial priority is to get a decent record onto the computer.

This is the lovely ‘Eaton Song’.

‘Winter Waltz’

And our very own self-sown seedling form, which I really like, and is recovering after being hacked out of the shale of the bank behind the house last summer.

Another exciting observation was seeing how the seedling leaves of Yellow Rattle and Eyebright have emerged already in my root trainers of Creeping bent, sown last autumn.

The month did indeed continue in very similar vein. After a few dry days in the first week, rain fell during every 24 hours for the rest of the month, with just brief sunny moments, often around dawn, or dusk.

Lambing kicked off as expected around the middle of March, and with that a ratcheting up of tiredness, tempered by the genuine thrill of marvelling at new lambs making it into this harsh world, sometimes with a bit of necessary assistance.

On the morning of March 28th, with 3 of our grandchildren staying with us for a few days, I drew back the curtains at 6.00am and exclaimed to Fiona that we’d had 2 inches of snow overnight – completely unpredicted.

Before they left we’d also all witnessed the most spectacular double rainbow we’d ever seen, as the sun briefly made it through the clouds, towards dusk. Giving us a twice repeated arcing rainbow, as we prepared to eat supper.

It didn’t last but did a fair bit of damage in the garden, due to its wet sludgy nature, temporarily flattening many of the daffodils, most of which, amazingly, recovered.

The lack of any significant frosts during the month meant a fabulous display of the Camellias, and the set snow made for some lovely images of Camellia flowers I’d set out for the very few visitors who’d thought visiting a garden in such weather conditions was worthwhile!

Our poor honey bees have had a really tough time this spring, but we ended the month with the 4 active colonies we’d had last October. Some are now in their third year of untreated, and with no supplementary feeding, existence.

As the month progressed, the daffodils, particularly in the Malus and Sorbus copse have continued to delight and thrill us both. As well as those around the shepherd’s hut where my seed scattering beginning 5 or 6 years ago, is really starting to produce significant effects.

The month finished with 3 ewes lambed, and a total of 4 ram lambs. 5 dry days, mainly in the first week, and just 3 light frosts to a minimum of minus 4 degrees C.

The monthly rainfall total of 217.6mm ranks it as the fourth wettest since I began recording such things in 2014 (86,92,123,223,196,241,127,98,65,331). The PV reading was equally poor at  248.49 KWH (348,297,319,266,257,273,362,289,367,187).

However, this monthly snapshot doesn’t really capture the landscape effects of many months in a row without decent light, and too much rain. We’re not sorry to see the back of this month, which usually isn’t the case for March, but current forecasts indicate we’re in for more of the same in April. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Greylag goose here before – for some reason, they’re uncommon in our part of Wales. Perhaps it was just flying over in search of better weather elsewhere?