Sedums can sometimes look rather straggly and apologetic, but there is something quite appealing about the tight-knit flowers of this Sedum ‘Stewed Rhubarb Mountain’, although I feel the delicious pinkness is more of a stewed forced rhubarb mountain. I bought a reproduction terracotta rhubarb forcer some time ago, but have never remembered to cover and uncover the crowns at an appropriate time, so it has always been more of a decorative feature. Last year I divided the crown and disposed of half of it as it was getting out of hand, but must have left pieces in the ground as it has returned with a vengeance – curse of the killer rhubarb! Reminds me of the Japanese anemone, which I took my spade to again at the weekend, but then took pity on and replanted all the rooted sections in the woodland edge border.
Despite the weather forecast for the Bank Holiday weekend we actually got off quite lightly and avoided the torrential rain on Saturday, despite some thunder, and our only real rain other than an odd shower was last night. Today, though, has seen the most sunshine for a week – our solar panel monitor displays energy production in kWh at any given time, as well as cumulative totals, and we have had some very low generation days recently – not only was today the best for a week, but a week ago was the highest since the week before that – and cynics (not me, I hasten to add) will say ‘we haven’t had a summer this year’! Apparently Pimms’s have carried out a survey which suggests that British people are so obsessed with the weather that we spend more than 3 months of our lives talking about it – it seems that 72% of us discuss the weather at least once a day, with the average conversation lasting 6½ minutes!
Rambling in the Garden 
I confess to weather obsession. In our windswept islands time is set by the rhythm of the seasons daily activities are dictated by the weather. A discussion about the weather begins and ends every conversation. So will it rain today?
My partner is a 5 day a week golfer and the last thing he does at night is to check the BBC weather forecast which showed a variety of the rain symbols all day for the Midlands – he managed 12 holes before it started. So, the answer to your question is YES! Although our weather does not have the extremes that you have I am nevertheless fascinated by the data from our weather monitor, particularly the inter-relationship; unfortunately it isn’t 100% reliable as the wind gauge isn’t registering at the moment and every so often the rainfall monitor ‘sticks’ (insects in the gauge, the website suggests!). My mother on Luing in the Inner Hebrides is equally fascinated and was thrilled when we we gave her a simple weather monitor, the island’s own amateur forecaster’s equipment having been ruined in the gales of winter 2010. The terrain on Luing means very different microclimates in different parts of the island, so not completely windswept like Uist – what my mother misses most are thunderstorms!
Sorry – the gales were last winter,2011 – Luing’s amateur forecaster’s wind gauge registered winds of over 120mph apparently!