Anybody seeing out of season flowers?

[Geoff F]

So far, this has been a mild wet and windy winter in the UK and I have several plants in my garden which are flowering out of season.

For example: calendular, camelia, fuschia, hebe salicifolia, great knapweed (Centaurea macrocephala), nasturtium, primrose (flowering for past month), snowflake. Alongside those which normally flower at this time; even daffodils and tulips are showing green leaves.

The camelia is full of buds so I hope we don't get a hard frost.

So are other people also finding unusual flowers this year?

Examples:-









7D and 24-105 lens, flash used on some.

Not perfect shots as some blooms are showing a bit of wind/rain damage; and although the rain had stopped and wind eased I had to cope with poor light and some wind rock problems.

The fuchsia was particularly difficult to find a suitable angle and full flash was tending to cause over exposure difficulties so I had to take an under exposed shot then try to increase partial brightness later. It has partially worked but I think the result seems a little 'artificial' so I will probably have another go at that one.

And on reflection, I think I will need to clone out the background leaf on the knapweed. If I had noticed how the tip was browned I would have zapped it before shooting.

It would have been better to cut the flowers then shoot under controlled conditions but these shots were part of testing my new camera.

[Donald]

'fraid we've had the frosts up here, a few hundred miles north of you. That's taken care of anything that was hanging on.

[Shadowman]

We've yet to have any significant snowfall so any greenery, other than Christmas trees, is out of place for December.

[MiniChris]

I'm still raking leaves from the oaks. It's a balmy 74 degrees F here today with a bit of rain.

[Geoff F]

I'm still raking leaves from the oaks. It's a balmy 74 degrees F here today with a bit of rain.

That is a bit better than we can manage in the UK, even in the mild SW corner where I live; although I suppose it was around 54 degrees today and I turned down the heating a little. Still dull and feeling damp though.

It is amazing how the weather can change so dramatically between different areas of a relatively small island like the UK. That is why we keep talking about it.

It's unusual to get more than a few flakes of snow here; unlike where Donald lives.

I just hope that if we get a totally mild winter it won't mess up the spring flowers too much. It can cause them to merge together and produce sporadic displays instead of putting on a really good show by all flowering around the same time.

ps. I've redone the fuchsia photo but it still doesn't look quite as I had intended.