January was a very mixed bag but mostly cold and wet with brief glimpses of sunshine. We had to cope with storm Eowyn by bringing in some of the patio pots and hiding the little ones in amongst the larger ones in case they blew away. The only damage as far as we could see was the spinning chimney cowl from the sitting room chimney came off and bounced to just behind the car so we were pretty lucky. The rear of the house backs onto the golf course and we have been identifying the trees likely to get damaged and informing the green keepers. Basically they did nothing and a couple of ash trees have had very large branches breaking off over the years so we paid for some work to remove the worst of the large branches that were overhanging our garden.
A very tall beech tree had some damage in 2022 when it broke by about 1/3, then storm Eowyn broke it again and the large bits of trunk fell right up to our back fence along with loads of large broken branches.
Like I said we were lucky but many places were not that lucky and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh did not fare well. Storm Éowyn: Gardens staff ‘devastated’ at loss of Edinburgh’s tallest tree – BBC News (If you visit the RBGE website there is a donation page).
The garden is still looking a bit dull just now, however, the crocuses and cyclamen are bringing some much need colour indoors.
I have the fleece ready to pull over the plants when the temperature outside falls, and there is a small portable oil radiator we can put on at a low peep to keep the temperature from falling bellow 50C. It will be a few more weeks yet before things start to warm up.
