Funnel Cloud spotted over North Bristol (20/7/11)

I do remember it getting quite gloomy late yesterday afternoon, I had put some washing out on the line and at 2 o’clock the weather looked as if it was beginning to clear up, with a few sunny intervals. Then later in the afternoon a rather dark gloomy cloud appeared to the north. I kept an eye out expecting it to start pouring with rain, then at around 5pm fliss decided to get the washing in as the clouds looked really threatening. Around a few minutes later, the rain started.

I didn’t think anymore about it, and then this morning on the Beeb local webpages, this…

Funnel Cloud Spotted Over North Bristol

I wish I had taken note of the pressure guage, today it is 1013 mbar, I guess it would have been dipping yesterday afternoon. One of these days I will fork out for a decent Barograph, an old clockwork one would be rather good. The school where I worked as a Physics Technician used to have a really nice one, I don’t think it had been used for years, but I had great fun getting it up and running. A really nice piece of kit. Rather expensive though

Gradko High quality Barograph

 

Chandhok to replace Trulli in Germany | Planet F1 | Formula One News

Good luck to Karun Chandhok at this weekends F1 race at the Nurburgring. I hope he does well and is competitive. His races last year with HRT (Hispania) were cut short by HRT’s need to get other pay-per-drive drivers in, ie Sakon Yamamoto. At least at Team Lotus he will have a better car, and it should be a guage of his talent.

Karun has on occasion been the expert summariser for the Beeb during their red button free practice broadcasts and he comes across as being a very knowledgeable and thoroughly likeable chap, with an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of Formula 1.

Chandhok to replace Trulli in Germany | Planet F1 | Formula One News.

Had to cry today…

I’ve been turned on to the guitar work of a certain Joe Bonamassa, sometimes he gets a bit too noodly, but I like noodles especially the bluesy ones.

Here’s a youtube vid of him and his band playing a version of Steve Winwood’s “Had to cry today”

Nice to see him playing a strat rather than his usually favoured Les Paul.

Typical English Summer

It hasn’t been the nicest of summers so far. Lots of rain, and sometimes unseasonally cool. I don’t mind the coolness but the lack of sunshine is a bit depressing.

It’s been a strange year for the garden, with the very warm/hot and sunny and dry April, which did hold back some of the early growth. for example the Astilbe, which usually puts on a lot of early growth, looks quite stunted. It hasn’t stopped it from flowering though, and with less foliage and more flowers it looks better, it doesn’t dominate the area around the small pond.

The poppies have been a total wash out, the new seed I bought failed to germinate and has left a fairly large sized poppy hole in the garden. A few stragglers, self-seeded from last year, have come up, but they’re pretty weedy looking.

The foxgloves that were planted last year, rather surprisingly got munched into oblivion by the slugs and snails. I really thought with all that digoxin in their leaves that the slugs would give them a wide berth. Not so.

I’ve got some morning glories on the go. A mixture, some old grandpa ott’s the dirty purple variety, which seem to self-seed every year, Flying saucers; some self-seeded, caprice – a pinky white variety, and the old favourite of mine the Heavenly blue. The Heavenly blues are probably the hardest to grow, they don’t like the cold, slugs and snails love them  when they’re young, and they seem to be fairly slow growing. But if the do get going they go wild and can easily reach 15 feet or more. Their flowers are the largest, and the blue is truly heavenly.

I haven’t seen so many bees this year, perhaps due to the weather being so grey and rainy that ‘ve not been out in the garden so much this year. The geraniums are really doing well, the Johnson blue being the most prolific, but others with varying shades of colour have also done quite well.

Columbine, aquilegia, has been magnificent, the old self-seeders have done quite well as usual, but the newer varieties that were introduced last year have been stunning. Long-spur varieties with a really gorgeous mix of colours. I think I have a few photos somewhere, so will share when i find them.

Lastly, Cacti… ah they deserve a post of their own….