Time for an Autumn clean-up
This week: Time for an Autumn clean-up; Celestial events;

Once again I am struggling to make sense of the data my weather station is producing.
After a month of below average temperatures, once again temperatures are rising.

It’s not just me who is confused. This week one of my Cherry plum trees has a lot of blossom and even new leaves growing.

This is just not normal.
I have even see two Cleopatra butterflies flying, Gonepteryx cleopatra.

Photo: Velebit
These are an early spring species. I presume some have hatched early. Only in parts of Spain are there European records of both spring and autumn broods.
Walking along the old donkey tracks around my home, there are the more normal seasonal changes to deciduous plants, where leaves are changing to burnished gold before they fall.

Daytime temperatures remain in the low to mid 20°s, with only a five degree difference between day and nightime maximum and minimum temperatures.
The day length is shortening markedly, yet on sunny days, my solar water tank is still reaching temperatures which cause the safety valve to lift. All in all, what we think of as “normal”, just does not seem to exist anymore.
I’ve been to a three hour evening presentation entitled “Rethinking the future of Hvar Island”.
There were around 100 people crowded into the Town Hall in Jelsa, to watch the film “2040” and asking the question, ‘What kind of world do we want to create?’.
There were no clear answers, however the turnout alone suggests there is a level of concern. What happens next and where we will be in 15 years, remains to be seen…
Time for an Autumn clean-up
I have a small greenhouse built out of polycarbonate twin-wall plastic sheeting in an unused balcony area and built before my polytunnel.
It was one of the first alterations I made when I bought my home here in Dol and after building greenhouse staging and a heated propagator, I have used it to grow and pot-on seeds, before they were planted outside in the orchards.
Over time it has become cluttered with plastic boxes and plant pots and other bits and pieces.
So this week, before the the start of winter when I will start to use the propagator again, I have been doing a clean up.
I am certain that there is a law of physics that states “People expand to fill the available space”. A different version of the same law that says if you build new roads, traffic will fill the newly made space!
One of my foibles is that I do not like throwing things away. So when I get a container which “might” be useful in the greenhouse for something, I clean it and put it to one side ready.
When I had finished the tidy up, there was quite a large bag of plastic containers, with lids, which will go for recycling next week.
It is a couple of years since I really cleaned out the propagator.

Over time, blowing dust has clouded the clear polycarbonate lid and one of the felines used the sand inside for a bed this summer.
I made the cover so it can just be lifted off the clear sides, then cleaned it with warm water.
The fine sand inside needed to be raked and cleaned and the soil warming cables se-set into the sand.
There were some plant pots which I removed and a few dry twigs.
After a day and a half, the greenhouse looks pristine once again, and the propagator is ready to receive seeds early next year, ready for another growing season.
Another job has been tidying up the terrace area ready for winter.
I was a little saddened to see that my comfy wooden bench is beginning to disintegrate due to age and exposure to the elements.

It is hardly surprising though, having been made around 40 years ago and having been outside in the harsh Yorkshire weather, the heat and sun of Spain and then Abu Dhabi, followed by experiencing the elements here in Dol.
It has been used daily since I moved to Dol.
I think I need to plan to make another over the winter to replace it. The only thing I wonder about is getting the quality of wood I need to make a bench which will last another 40 years…
Celestial events
Thursday was the Hunter Full Moon, and a “Super Moon” event to boot. Bud sadly on Thursday we had full cloud cover, so nothing was visible.
However earlier in the week, I was on the top of the island and took the following photos of the moon as it approached full on Tuesday, as it rose.


The reason why I was on a vantage point on the limestone ridge which runs the length of the island though, was to look for Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas.
As the brightest comet to be seen from Earth for the past 27 years, this is a celestial object that has been worth looking for.
The last comet I saw was Hale-Bopp in 1997, since then there have been comets, but none visible with the naked eye.
Comet A3 was first visible in the southern hemisphere in September and has only just become visible in the northern hemisphere, low in the western sky about an hour after sunset.
I watched the sun set into the Adriatic Sea, with the lights island of the Island of Viz coming on.

There was thin high cloud together with a little sea mist which made for some nice sunset colours, but obscured the actual sun disappearing into the Adriatic.

At sunset there is the possible to see a “Green Flash” at the moment the last point of the edge of the sun disappears, but the atmosphere has to absolutely clear. I’ve never seen it, only photographs.

Photo: Orlando-com
But it was not to be on Tuesday.
After sunset there was a “sun pillar”, a meteorological phenonium when sunlight reflects off the facets of falling ice crystals in thin high level cirrostratus clouds.

I have a small telescope, but took a pair of binoculars with me. Scanning the sky at 50 minutes after sunset I found the comet.
However because of the high level cloud, it was slightly blurred. As the night closed in the comet became visible to the naked eye.
There are huge numbers of photographs on-line like this take just to the east in Kosovo.

Photo: Azem Ramadani
Most of these photographs are time exposures. For me, because of the thin veil of cloud, I didn’t bother trying to photograph it.
The comet is now heading away from Earth at great speed, but will still be visible although becoming less bright every night, until the end of October.
Each night it will be higher in the western sky, but becoming less visible all the time.
Comet A3 is a long-period comet with an 80,000 year orbit around the sun.
This comet was last seen by the Neanderthals, Denisovans and the first modern humans. I wonder who will be around on Earth when the comet is next visible in our skies… NCG