The sun setting on the last day of September along John Moore Road in Castlebar, Co. Mayo. A breathtaking deep red sky with serried white cloud across the sky reflecting lighter shades of pink - announcing the end of September and the arrival of WINTER? But the hottest day of the year was only a few days ago - not so much perhaps in Castlebar but  the East Coast sweltered this week. A funny end to the coldest summer in 50 years - cold but dry at least. Drier than usual.

Will the extreme cold of last winter and the winter before return in the 2011/2012 winter? They say the unusual lack of sunspots was partly responsible at least although no clear-cut mechanism is obvious. Sunspots are huge magnetic outbursts from the sun's innards and an indicator of the sun's activity levels. The 'Maunder Minimum' with few or no sun spots for a few decades back in 1640 to 1715 is linked to extremely cold winters back then. Current predictions from NASA suggest the current 11-year sunspot cycle will peak quite a bit below the normal in approx 2013 but at least the sun is waking up again after a bit of a slumber - a slumber which they are saying makes it the quietest cycle in 100 years.

Is it worth buying snow chains for your tires? A heating lamp over your attic tank is definitely worthwhile especially if you plan to be away from your house for more than a day or so at any stage over the winter  months. Did your water pipes freeze last winter? Is there anything you can do at this stage to stop that happening again if we get such a prolonged spell of really low temperatures? Not that practical to dig them in deeper down into the ground but insulate exposed taps and joints at access points?  Worth knowing where your pipes are located though - then at least you could light small fires on the surface directly above the pipes to stop the ground freezing? A few briquettes and fire lighters perhaps. There was some discussion about whether clearing the surface snow aggravated the freezing below ground and actually speeded up the freezing of the water in the pipes.

Still a lot of dead Cordyline palms all down the west coast. In what used to be sub-tropical Kerry especially, there are lots of very tall multi-branch palm trees obviously 20 or 30 years old - and all totally dead. They will make good supports for Christmas lights but they're not going to recover. Adverts on the radio yesterday for Cordyline palms in the garden centres or supermarkets. Maybe that's a vote of confidence that we're not into another Maunder Minimum but planting Cordylines and escallonias and other tender plants may not be such a good long-term investment.