FOG & FRUSTRATION

After the last few glorious days ... overnight ... it rained again and this morning ... FOG!

I write that large because right across the online weather forecast it repeats the word in capitals all the way across the expected weather for the day. Unusual for us we had easterly winds and up by the sheep pens with a farmer friend this morning, we were talking, sheltering from the easterly rain. He had hoped to get 50 ewes ready for a Texel ram but the conditions were so bad that he gave up on the idea. The pens were a mess of mud, the sheep were soaking, so he couldn't inoculate them. So Tex will just have to wait.

The weather ahead for the next few days isn't much better and in about a week, there is the threat of bitterly cold arctic winds bringing a sudden drastic drop in temperature, just as the tups are wanting to be warming up for action. The farmers have a juggling act ahead, what to do when? For us humans, best get the thermals out and ready!

To cheer things up I drove down to lower ground to let the dog have a run about.

Cwm Big (pronounced "beeg" in Welsh) was dank, wet and soggy underfoot but the colours of the autumnal leaves made the world seem a brighter place today. A lovely mixture here of conifers and deciduous but ... in past autumns the colour range has been much greater. There were places along the forest road that were invisible due to fallen leaves. Now that is unusual here as in other places. The "Fall" as they call it in America & Canada is normally slow with a much greater difference in leaf colouration and has in past years been a wonderful place to walk. It didn't even smell like Autumn today and not just due to the wet. There are some serious problems in this area of forest. The larch trees are infected with Phytophthora ramorum (a very invasive pathogen) also earlier in the year I noticed sycamore & oak leaves disfigured by odd coloured spots falling early. And today there was another severely disfigured plant and one of my favourites, The Meadowsweet.

These strange lumps and bumps were  all over nearly all the specimens I saw and ...

it could also be clearly seen on the underside of the leaves. I've never seen it before.

It seems that so many plant species have been subject to problems this year, it's sad. 

But at least the good old blackberry leaves were able to give a bright if damp display.

 But another thing I noticed today were the wild strawberry leaves, they too normally turn lovely shades of russet, green and red ... but not this year. It is all really rather weird.

And here's another abnormality that I spotted the other day, ivy in flower  ...

normally at this time of year, the ivy plants are heavily berrying!

Now I admit to a certain amount of light adjustment in these photo's. It was all actually rather drizmal, dismal, dank and damp. So I felt the need to cheer things up a little bit.

And just to end, something else I saw the other day, graffiti on a night club wall.