Summer for a day

I welcome August's arrival; it's the last month of winter and usually when we get our coldest weather so I definitely wasn't prepared for the blast of warm air as I left for work yesterday. A quick glance at the thermometer on my ranchslider (13°C) and off came my rain coat and woolly hat. It's getting markedly lighter now in the mornings and halfway through my walk the korimako (bellbirds) start their dawn chorus.

I had my camera ready as was hoping for a stunning sunrise - we had clear skies with enough wispy high cloud to reflect the rising sun as I left home...

1 August around 7.35am - light patches at the bottom are the mud puddles
on my driveway

Flax silhouette - front boundary

Still looking promising for a great sunrise - but this was as good as it got!

The temperature continued to increase throughout the morning and by the time I got home at 1.30pm, the thermometer was registering 22.9°C!! Crazy temperatures for winter and I'm sure the plants will be as confused as I am by these unseasonable fluctuations. I'm not sure if it got any warmer as I took the thermometer down to wash the windows and didn't put it back up until late afternoon.

I took advantage of the balmy weather to get the washing out and take another slow walk around my traps. There was no need to light the fire last night as it was still 20°C inside when I went to bed.

Back to normal today though - it's now 8°C at 11am, up from a minimum of 7°C at 8am when the min/max thermometer resets! The fire's lit and I'm hoping there will be a break in the rain sometime today so I can check my traps.

3 August update: a frost and 1.8°C this morning; easy for me to put another layer of clothing on but not so easy for the plants. I'm listening to Insight on Radio New Zealand talking about the impacts of climate change on harvests and how it is getting increasingly difficult to feed the world's population.