A glorious blue sky day. In the park, as we walked along, Rosa gambolling at our feet, it felt like summer in my head.
Of course the reality was somewhat different. The ground was hard with a heavy frost. The clay solid. The paleness of the grass streaked by low winter sunshine made it look blue with cold. My feet knew this feeling.
I caught a glimpse of the thermometer in the car, it read 3C. It had certainly tipped below zero during the night in Regents Park, but down in our part of the city, temperatures might have teetered around the zero mark, but I dont think they went far below.
We have air conditioning extracts to the west and south of us, not to mention several kitchen extracts that issue from adjacent chimney pots. Our studio is directly below the roof garden. It has to get really cold for it to freeze on the rooftopvegplot.
I've been checking the temperature in the greenhouse via a nifty little remote control device. Up until this week I was amazed with the ambient temperature up there. It never seemed to vary much, cycling between 16 and 14C. But as it has become colder and colder my scepticism has increased.
I checked the fan heater that I keep in the greenhouse. Could it be that it's been cutting in every evening, ruining me financially? But no. I took it right out of the greenhouse and still the temperature was stable.
Nothing for it, I decided. I'll just have to check the temperature guage. I assumed that at it had broken.
Mumbling invective against the thermometer company and casting aspersions at the foreign origins of the equipment, I fumbled around amidst the dying foliage trying to find the gauge. But the damn thing could not be found. It hadn't dropped onto the floor. I hadn't moved it over to the other side of the greenhouse. Where could it be?
Slowly it began to dawn upon me. Perhaps the unit was not faulty. Perhaps it was accurately recording the temperature of somewhere else. Somewhere warmer. Perhaps it wasn't in the greenhouse at all.
I found it then, easily enough, propped up on a shelf in the 'potting shed'. (Actually the range of shelves that line the staircase that leads up to the roof terrace). The staircase, being inside, but unheated, should be registering a moderate temperature. 14-16C is about right.
Of course now I realise that I don't really know what temperature the greenhouse is keeping. I've replaced the guage. Right now the sun is shining and the outside air temperature is 5 degrees. Inside the greehouse the guage is reading 16.5C. And I can attest to the warmth up there. Even at this time of year the greenhouse gets the full sun all day, and a lovely warm brick wall reflects all that heat back at night-time. Or at least, that is the theory. Im wondering what the guage will be reading tonight, as I sit in the splendid warmth in the studio below.
