55 degrees? In February?

Yes it's all too true. The temperature outside my house at 1.31pm today was 55 degrees farenheit (12.7 C) which is, well, frankly wrong. Apparantly, this January was the warmest in the UK since 1916 which is before even I was born.

Now whilst these mild temperatures are a great way to save money on the old heating bills, it's not so good for the flora and fauna. We've already got flowers starting to emerge which aren't due to appear for another 6-8 weeks and only yesterday I saw a bee wafting around the herbacious borders. Now assuming that we do actually get a bit of proper winter soon, the bees and the daffs are going to get nailed by any hard frost that turns up. Not good news if your a bee or a flower.

Having thought about it, there was only one night in the whole of January where we had a frost. That's berserk. I also learned today that grass grows when the temperature is above 5 degrees C. And true to form, our grass is growing like mad. I'm actually going to have to do some mowing - in February! Well, if this is global warming, we'd better start getting used to some big changes and I don't just mean winter grass growth either. Things could get serious much earlier than the boffins have predicted and I don't believe we're ready for it. A sobering thought indeed.

Oh well, at least we'll save money on foreign holidays.