Flowers with no leaves that grow in the woods at this time of year.
September was our rainiest September ever: 141.6mm, beating last year into second place, and our second coldest, only beaten by last year, but the solar panel output was close to average.
A1 is reading the unseasonal The Masquerades of Spring by Ben Aaronovitch, a Rivers of London “novella”. Time was when a 165-page book would be a fairly standard SF novel.
Category: Weather
Buckets of Rain
Lots of rain today, and the entrance foyer of the local Co-Op has a serious leak problem.
A1 is reading Clown Town by Mick Herron.
Another Rainbow
Another rainbow on a stormy day.
A2 is reading The Girl in Cell A by Vaseem Khan, a disappointing psychological thriller set in small-town USA, from a writer who usually writes engagingly about Parsee policewomen and baby elephants. Abir Mukherjee’s last book was a thriller set in America too. Maybe publishers are persuading their authors to be more global.
September in the Rain
We had more rain this afternoon than in the whole of August, including 16.5mm in one hour. It’s all gone now and all A2 could find to photograph were a few drops hanging out to dry on the washing line. Turned upside down they are tiny bubble habitats containing miniature versions of our garden.
A1 is rereading Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. A2 is rereading Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood.
Rainbow
A rainbow on a rainy day. What else is there to say?
A1 is rereading The Institute by Stephen King. A2 is reading Normal Rules Don’t Apply by Kate Atkinson.
Crowd of the Day: Chapel Allerton Arts Festival
A2 was put off by the seething crowd under a lowering sky so did not go in and got home before the heavy rain started.
A2 is reading Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway.
Two Dog Night
As the sun sets two sundogs appear at its sides.
A1 is reading Whispers from the Dead* by Lin Anderson. A2 is reading A Schooling in Murder* by Andrew Taylor; a school-cum-ghost-cum-detective story set in the last days of World War II. A2 enjoyed it but YMMV.
Cannibalism
Focus on the Pholcus: the cosmopolitan cellar spider. We have been tolerating these spindly spinners with their messy webs on the assumption that they will tackle the fruit flies, house flies and bluebottles hanging around our house but it turns out that their favourite food is other spiders, those that probably have more interest in flies.
In other news, our new weather forecast page is progressing.
A1 is reading The Sycamore Gap* by LJ Ross and A2 is reading Human Remains* by Jo Callaghan.
Shiver Me Timbers!
Trembling trees in Storm Floris. Leeds is just within the yellow warning area.
A1 is rereading Bryant & May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler. A2 is reading The Shadow Collector by Kate Ellis.
Crescent Moon
We didn’t have a photo today so this dim moon in a darkening sky is from a couple of days ago. It’s bigger now, and hidden behind clouds.
July 2025 was our 6th rainiest, 7th warmest and 7th sunniest, so pretty average.
A1 is reading Plutoshine* by Lucy Kissick. Oh dear. A1 wanted to like this, a hard-skiffy tale of terraforming Pluto, but it just didn’t work. Written in a quasi-juvenile style, the characters lacked any depth and the story was incoherent. Not to mention deeply implausible. Nul points, I’m afraid.
Seaside Postcard
As the sun sets, the sky becomes a beach with waves.
A2 is reading Dark as Night* by Lilja Sigurdardottir. The most horrifying revelation was that Icelanders put sugar on their mashed potatoes. Imagine!
Family Pride
Today the younger ones went on the Pride march so we celebrated with rainbow kebabs, rainbow salad and rainbow rice, followed by a rainbow cake. It rained on their parade (20.4mm so far, including 11.4mm in one hour) and thundered a bit, but there were no rainbows.
After a good start we scored another below-par 9.5 on the GSQ. Come on everybody!
A2 is rereading Locked In* by Jussi Adler-Olsen.
A Record, of Sorts
| Rank | Date | Total | Year total/rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 11 Jul 2025 | 1001.506 | ? |
| 2 | 16 Jul 2020 | 1009.582 | 1513.188/3 |
| 3 | 16 Jul 2015 | 1005.793 | 1528.472/2 |
| 4 | 17 Jul 2022 | 1000.305 | 1537.314/1 |
| 5 | 18 Jul 2021 | 1001.289 | 1484.297/4 |
| 6 | 19 Jul 2018 | 1007.096 | 1483.659/5 |
| 7 | 24 Jul 2023 | 1007.385 | 1465.268/7 |
| 8 | 25 Jul 2019 | 1004.350 | 1467.265/6 |
| 9 | 27 Jul 2014 | 1002.906 | 1440.038/8 |
| 10 | 29 Jul 2013 | 1000.932 | 1419.952/9 |
| 11 | 3 Aug 2017 | 1003.167 | 1403.480/10 |
| 12 | 8 Aug 2012 | 1004.008 | 1369.068/11 |
| 13 | 10 Aug 2016 | 1000.968 | 1366.583/12 |
| 14 | 10 Aug 2024 | 1000.675 | 1321.768/13 |
A fine and sunny day, and the warmest of the year (32.6°C).
The solar panels made 12.33kWh, which takes us past 1000kWh for the year. This is the earliest date we’ve reached this milestone, as seen in the table, and puts us on target for a very good year.
Critter of the Day: Unidentified Small Hoverfly
Dilly-dallying on the dill.
The weather station was out of action for the cold wet start of the month, so according to our records June 2025 was the second driest and second warmest June of all time, with the temperature reaching 31.9°C yesterday. It was the fourth sunniest June ever according to the solar panels.
A1 is reading The Red Shore by William Shaw (thanks A2!). A2 is reading Guilt by Jussi Adler-Olsen.
Cloud of the Day: Mackerel Sky
Our weather station is working again, just in time for the warm weather after days of cold and drizzle.
A1 is rereading The Puppet Show by MW Craven. A2 is rereading Dead Girl Walking by Chris Brookmyre.
After the Feast
We were so busy enjoying our family dinner of roast pork, potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, broccoli, peas, carrots, stuffing and gravy, followed by home-grown rhubarb crumble with custard and cream, at which we scored a solid 12 on the GSQ, that we forgot to photograph it, so here is a picture of some of the washing-up.
Our weather station has been hors de memory crash for the past week so does not know that we have had ample rain recently, so according to our figures, May 2025 was averagely warm and exceedingly dry (a mere 0.6mm). The solar panels are working though; May 2025 was the third sunniest May and the eighth sunniest month ever.
A2 is rereading When the Devil Drives by Christopher Brookmyre.
The One That Got Away
The cat made its annual attempt at catching a baby starling but A2 managed to usher it out of the house before it became a fluffy cat snack. Here it is catching its breath in the bushes before it flew away.
Sad news: our weather station has stopped working. We were expecting it to rain in the near future but now we’ll never know. Unless we look out of the window.
A1 is reading Hollow Grave* by Kate Webb. A2 is reading Buying Time* by EM Brown.
Round and Round
A colourful halo seen from the library roof. Still very dry this month (0.3mm so far), but rain is expected over the weekend.
A1 is reading All of Us Are Broken* by Fiona Cummins, the third book in a row not cast aside lightly. Thrown with great force, to be precise. It was horrible.
A2 is reading The Shadow by Ajay Chowdhury
The Garden After…
…the second driest April on our records. The tulips are packing up and the bluebells are pushing through. Compare two weeks ago and all previous May Days. As well as being the second driest, April was our third sunniest and fifth warmest April of all time. May Day started well with 28°C and 10.6kWh but it won’t last if the forecast is correct.
A2 is reading The Dark Wives* by Ann Cleeves.
Halo Again!
This pretty halo is actually from yesterday; today’s weather news is that it is the warmest day this year so far: 25.6°C with warmer days to come, probably.
A2 is reading Perfidious Albion* by Sam Byers.
Halo There!
A faint halo with a lucky pigeon. Today we overtook last April on the solar panel front.
A2 is reading A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering* by Andrew Hunter Murray. Third book in a row in which a character gets messages saying I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Raindrops on Tulips
A flower, a fly and a few drops of rain the day after our solar panels recorded nearly 11 kWh.
A1 is reading Buying Time* by EM Brown, the impenetrable pseudonym of sf writer Eric Brown. This is another approach to the relive-your-life subgenre (cf North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Atkinson’s Life after Life etc), in which a rather irritating Writer goes back to various events in his past and tries to learn from them.
A2 is reading The Alaska Sanders Affair* by Joel Dicker, in which the hero, who is special because he’s a Writer and has apparently written all Joel Dicker’s books (Joel should sue) solves a cold case with the help of the police and all their resources. Irritating.
Bright Sunshiny Day
April begins with our sunniest day of the year 8.71kWh. March was more than averagely warm, less than averagely wet and our second sunniest March of all time.
A2 is rereading All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre.
Partial Eclipse Day
The day started auspiciously with a fine 22° halo, seen on the webcam.
Clouds rolled in, but there were enough gaps to see the eclipse between 10am and noon.
And here’s the traditional colander picture, with hundreds of crescent suns:
A2 is reading The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre.
Contrails
Warmest day of the year so far: 19.0°C, and the sunniest by a couple of watts, and dry.
Met Office forecast for today: “Cloudy with strong winds and rain”
We have been watching Adolescence. Phew!