Hello friends,
It feels like I've been waiting for our first frost forever. After our long, hot summer, a brief cool snap at the beginning of March signaled the beginning of autumn for us. By that time our Japanese maple tree had already begun changing colour to a brilliant vermilion red, and began losing its leaves.
Our dahlias started to look very straggly, and looked even worse after being neglected while I recovered from surgery. I've been waiting impatiently for a frost to take them out, so that I could cut back all the growth in preparation for winter, and make the gardens a little tidier. But up until now even though we had some mornings that hovered around 2˚C, no frost had appeared.
After checking my garden diaries for the first frost date over the last five years, it looked like our first frost wouldn't be likely until early to mid-May.
2019 - 6th April
2020 - 17th May
2021 - 6th May
2022 - 27th May
April passed by, and then the beginning of May. Every morning I looked out our bedroom window, hoping for frosty roofs, and sparkly grass out on our street. But up until now I've been out of luck.
It was chilly this morning, but when I checked our weather station's live data we were sitting at 1.7˚C, so I thought we were out of luck. Hubby went out for his daily run, and when he came back he reported seeing frosty patches on the grass around the neighbourhood. So I checked our weather station graphs, and we did have a frost overnight. The temperature outside went below 0˚C at around 5 am, and dropped to a low of -0.8˚C for over an hour. The wind got up at 6.30 am, and the frost was over.
After waiting impatiently all day for frost damage to appear on all my dahlias, I was disappointed, my dahlia foliage are all still green and healthy. It looks like I'll have to wait longer for another frost to take them out.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
