Climate change...

I'm beginning to think its true.

Returning from running my eldest and her boyfriend to Leeds Station - actually returning from the (nearly) hour long trip having been conned into giving them the lift (I thought they meant our local five minutes away station when they asked for "a lift to the station") - I noticed one of the shrubs in our front garden has started sprouting a new growth of leaf buds, before the old leaves have finished falling off.

We used to have defined seasons in the UK, autumn was the time for all the leaves to fall off and for the trees and shrubs to shut down, winter was for shivering in and shovelling snow off the driveway, and spring was for the new buds - thats spring in about five months time, sometimes spring wouldn't happen until April or so...

Not now, we haven't had a good snowy winter for about ten years now, and Leeds is quite a long way up the country, we're on the same latitude as Northern Germany/Denmark, now we just get wet mild winters with only a few weeks of frost and one, maybe two days of snow (thin, unimpressive snow) at worst.

So as far as the shrubs in my front garden are concerned its spring right now, we've had a wet week but the temperature has not dropped and its not really been cold so I kind of understand how the shrubs are getting confused , but I've never seen a year where they are making new growth before the old leaves have even finished falling off.

And since my attention was grabbed to all things horticultural I looked in the two oak half barrels that we have by the front door - the Gerbera or African Daisy's that had died back in one of the planters have come back again and look like they are almost ready to flower, and the trailing lobelia in the other one which were pulled out dead a few months ago must have seeded because that planter is full of new growth.

Leeds a tropical climate ?

Looks like it to me.