After a very mild and weird January came an even weirder February. In my country, February is known as “Veljača prevrtnjača” roughly meaning moody February, because in normal years we have all sorts of weather in February, from extremely cold, with temperatures well below -10°C(14°F) with daily temperatures below zero, to days with almost mild spring temperatures. The beginning of February is well known for big amounts of snow that cover our gardens, and by the middle of February freezing rain that paralyzes us for almost a whole week is something we experience almost every year.
This, however, was not that kind of year. 

This February was very mild, with almost spring temperatures that are usual for the end of March. We didn’t get that snow cover we’re used to this year. Actually this year we had almost no snow at all. December had one snow day, January two snow days, and February gave us one snow day in the end. The amount of rain and snow was well below the average resulting in 50litres of rain and 2cm of snow which melted in less than 24 hours.

Instead of rain we got lots of mild, even fully sunshine days but with very strong winds. The beginning of the month brought us forceful north winds which did a lot of damage to houses and nature. Luckily here we’re used to this kind of wind so there was no damage to our garden or house although there were moments when I honestly thought the wind would tear down our balcony awning which is completely metal and welded down to the metal balcony fence. 
There were some broken and fallen trees and the wind blew off the box of lettuce we had on the balcony which we never found, but other than that there was no real damage. After that, the wind changed direction to the south and since then we had many days with strong damaging south winds, but since my house is on the north side of the hill we don’t feel the south winds as much. I am having problems with the greenhouse cover which is on the southern balcony and I have to keep on repairing it but other than that we prefer the south wind.

When it comes to garden work February has mostly been a seedling month. At the beginning of the month, I have sown my peppers and some early lettuces and onions. Peppers have been all growing well except for the Botinečka pepper that has been a fail again. 

At the end of the month, I’ve pruned all my trees and sown all the tomato varieties. 

This is pretty much all the work that can be done here in February. Although it has been a warm one we can’t be sure that March won’t be a cold one and we can’t forget the last year’s May which had January temperatures all through the first 15 days.

Another thing worth mentioning is that on 28th we were hit by a meteor…

Photo not mine, it’s a screenshot taken from our tv news

well not exactly hit because it exploded in the air and the smaller bits fell on the ground but it was a sure and interesting experience. It came with a loud bang followed by a burst of air that shook the windows like there was an earthquake and then a roaring sound like a huge thunder just hit the ground. I wasn’t really sure what happened because I couldn’t really see anything due to the cloudy weather we had here, but the sound was really something I haven’t heard before. 

We have monthly military plane testing and they ofter break the sound barrier but this was much louder and very long. It was quite a big one since the reports say that the blast was heard all over Croatia, Slovenia, and even north Italy. The blast was so powerful that it was seen in the sky like an explosion and if it were in the night the whole country would light up like it was the middle of the day. The funny thing is that it fell somewhere close to my village, so now while I take Srećko for a walk I’ll be looking out for the fallen bits…you never know, maybe I’ll find something.