I’m not sure we’ve ever had a March (here) begin in such a wonderful way – six days of glorious sunshine with no rain and few clouds. Until the 6th, the temperatures might not have been that high – rarely into double figures (degrees C), and with often sharp frosts to minus 5 overnight.

But nevertheless, after a rather gloomy winter, it’s brought spring in with a wonderful rush.

Daffodils are gradually beginning to open, and with much more honey bee activity, as well as the bumblebees getting up to speed after a late start in the last few days of February, the garden is humming with activity.

I’ve been out at dawn on many days, well wrapped, recording birdsong and dawn light, which never fails to delight me. In particular, we’re thrilled to have a song thrush singing very close to the house again this year, although having to tackle the 3 fallen fir trees to the North east of the shrubbery bank which had been toppled by Storm Darragh, temporarily put it off its stride.

Crocus have continued to light up the garden, opening on most days, once the frost had worn off, and we’ve enjoyed another wonderful weekend of garden visitors on the weekend of St. David’s day, when the garden looked beautiful and everyone seemed to enjoy their visit, and go away with fond memories. On the 6th, temperatures reached 12 Degrees C, and 4 of the remaining honey bee colonies were very active, with much pollen being taken in. A bee was even exploring the ‘pee-can’, earlier, I think, than ever before.  

More flowers and shoots began to emerge overnight in many areas of the garden, to pick up the baton, as the waves of early snowdrops begin to fade for another year, as the bees have finally managed to pollinate the flowers en-masse.

As the mainly dry weather continued towards the middle of the month, with a single night of rain sufficient to keep plants fresh, we had plenty of opportunity for outside physical work tidying up fallen trees from Storm Darragh, as well as 3 big sessions using our tripod ladder to tackle seriously leaning trees on the access track. These had got to the point where they were preventing Lloyd’s bigger HiAb lorry getting up to us with our next batch of pallets of wood pellets for the biomass stove. We must remind ourselves to tackle this work on an annual basis, when the leaves are off the trees and we have calm weather conditions. Although we only own the 60 yards of the access track closest to our house, we sadly find ourselves having to manage most of its distance to keep things shipshape, If we didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done, it seems.

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I did a quick whizz around the garden to produce a 90 second video of some of the most appealing views of the garden, as snowdrops begin to disappear for another year, while the daffodils pick up the baton.

For much of this period, we were blessed with more fabulous sunrises.

March continued in this same weather pattern, for almost all of the month. Bright, mainly dry with often chilling east or North-east winds. But few hard frosts.

A notable drama was discovering a llama in our upper hay meadow just as a pre-planned group of garden visitors were due to arrive. Speedy action solved the potential crisis as we managed to remove the beast before any significant damage occurred.

A little rain fell on the 22, 23 and 28th. Otherwise nothing. 25 dry days in total and a monthly rainfall total of just 36.5 mm.

The PV inverter reading of 388.61 KWH was more than 50% greater than the gloomy March of 2024. The Met Office summary for the month confirmed that nationally it was the second warmest March on record and one of the driest and sunniest in our part of the country – well ahead of the rolling 30 year means on all these parameters.

This slots into this run of March data I’ve been collecting now for 12 years, with maximum and minimum readings highlighted:

2014: 86 mm, 13 dry days, PV – 348 KWH

2015: 92 mm, 15 dry days, PV – 297 KWH

2016: 123mm, 16 dry days, PV – 319 KWH

2017: 223 mm, 8 dry days, PV – 266 KWH

2018: 196 mm,  7 dry days, PV – 257 KWH

2019: 241 mm, 9 dry days, PV – 273 KWH

2020: 127 mm, 12 dry days, PV – 362 KWH

2021: 98 mm, 15 dry days, PV – 289 KWH

2022: 65 mm, 20 dry days, PV – 367 KWH

2023: 331.6 mm, 4 dry days, PV – 187 KWH

2024: 217.6 mm, 5 dry days. 3 days light frost, PV – 248.49 KWH

2025: 36.5 mm, 25 dry days, PV – 388.6 KWH

Towards the middle of the month, lambing began and was a delight compared with the wet of 2024, with only 1 assisted delivery, and 12 lambs from 8 ewes.

Much of the later part of the month was taken up with me engaging with researchers from the BBC who were looking to film a feature on daffodils. After a short postponement  due to poor weather with too strong winds, the crew arrived on the last day for an all day shoot.

Using me as a novice ‘presenter’ made it quite an exhausting session, but the 4 person crew were incredibly hard working and lovely and as I write this, we’re hopeful that the clip will be broadcast shortly and reflect just how wonderful Gelli can be at this time of the year, if the weather behaves itself. Even if overall numbers of daffodil flowers were down on more normal levels no doubt in part due to last year’s poor light and lack of a  dry summer rest for the  bulbs.