GARDENINGTHE effects of climate change are now becoming commonplace and it is amazing how quickly we come to accept them.
Time was when a daffodil blooming before Christmas in a Godshill churchyard would have been more newsworthy to The Daily Telegraph than the sound of the first cuckoo but now, it’s just accepted.
David Farrow, from Newchurch, sent me some pictures over a month ago of his confused apple and crabapple trees taken at DJ’s Animal Boarding in the village, which were blossoming and coming into new leaf a good five months early.
Nick and Wendy Miller bought their iris at Northcourt Manor at Shorwell in late August.
They planted it the following day and since then it has grown a flower spike and on December 1 it opened its first bloom.
Nick said: "Is this a bit unusual or just one of many freaky mild weather occurrences?
The tale is, amusingly, and nicely rounded off by Sue Noyce: "I know you have been featuring plants that are blooming way out of their normal season and the weather is unseasonably warm, but summer bedding plants (petunias, lobelias etc) in a half-page colour CP advert at the end of November — what is going on?"
Not freaky weather, Sue, just the wrong piece of artwork.