On Christmas Eve, we had the celebration of the area’s Advent Street Calendar. Date numbers went up in house windows, one house at a time, from the 1 December to the 25 December (with one exception) in the streets participating: Earlham Grove, Clova Road, and Sprowston Road. The garden was 24, the only one not a house. 21was due to be the Cherubim and Seraphim church but they forgot, and so it hasn’t gone up. So if you are taking the walk round the area to find the various numbers (a popular post Christmas pastime) don’t panic if you can’t find 21, or go back and forth endlessly, thinking it’s your fault. It isn’t at all.
We had mince pies and other cakes, tea and coffee at our celebration, the last of the year. Lanterns were made with tea lights in painted glass bottles, and plaques painted. The weather was fairly mild, and we had about a 100 visitors. A good occasion to relax, meet friends and wish them well for the holiday.
The big sycamore, by the fence, has been lightly pruned, as has the smaller one by the compost bins. I was somewhat worried they might get a brutal pruning, but we had a considerate tree surgeon. Certainly we get lots of seeds (the winged helicopters) which get everywhere, but they are easy to pull out. The trees are habitats for birds and an assortment of insect life, as well as providing shade. I note pigeons like them, probably eating the buds.
One of strawberry plants has flowers, highly unusual for late December but it has been relatively mild. Other plants in flower are marigolds, salvias, a few pink roses in the arch, and a bergenia in flower by the silver birch. There are a few berries around, including the pink snowberry, and the spectacular cotoneaster by the buddleia. The latter has a profusion of red berry clusters. There’s a holly by the greenhouse, but not a single berry. Most likely it is a male holly; only the female hollies produce berries. Hollies are dioecious, which means you need two trees, a male and female, to get berries.
Our olive tree has four four olives. Or rather it did have a few days ago. Now it has three, either a bird went for it or a curious human. Either way, we are not yet ready to set up our virgin olive oil plant. But pleased and a little surprised that the tree could produce olives in our climate.
We have had our covered area now for about six weeks. In length, it takes up one side of the container and is about about four metres wide. In sunny weather, it is full of light, and warm from the greenhouse effect. In dull, and more common winter weather, it is a little warmer, and keeps off cold winds. We roll up the transparent sides after use as foxes chew the bottom tags. We have been using it for meetings, with light provided by rechargeable lamps, also for art sessions and for a warmer area for lunch over the winter.
We have two solar panels in place on top of the container, angled to the sun. One of these is working and the other will be soon. The electrical energy they provide we are storing in two batteries. We can use it to charge lamps for lighting, and have heated a travel kettle. There are suggestions to use the energy for heating the covered area, to at least take the chill off. How effective this might prove, we are yet to find out. It is a working experiment and we are keen to learn how best to utilise our solar panels. This time of year has least sunlight with the short days and the sun low in the sky, giving us considerably less energy than in summer.
On a solar panel forum I found the following figures from a user:
June 2023: Total generated 493 kWh
December 2022: Total generated 68 kWh
That is roughly 7 times more energy generated in a summer month than in a winter one. Meaning, in summer we can have a bigger kettle.
The Winter Solstice has just passed (on 21 December). That was the shortest day of the year, around 7 hours 50 minutes between sunrise and sunset. From now on the days get longer but one hardly notices until mid January. Though, we will become more aware of day length as our storage of solar energy increases,