When gardening, do it right and use helpful weather equipment to assist you
If you are serious about gardening, then you should purchase some helpful weather instruments for your garden. A gardener needs to know what the weather is doing or is going to do. These garden weather instruments can give you advance notice of imminent weather conditions or can reveal, for example, just how much rain you got the night before.
One of the simplest garden weather instruments ever invented is the rain gauge, which is used to collect data concerning the amount of solid (snow) or liquid (rain) precipitation that has occurred in a given period of time. Rain gauges help you collect useful information. If your garden weather instruments indicate a large amount of anticipated precipitation, for example, a gardener can plan to capture and save rain water for watering your plants during a drought or washing your hair.
You can purchase decorative rain gauges that will look really cool in your garden. The rain gauge is functional, of course, but it can be aesthetically pleasing as well. Some rain gauges look like garden gnomes, flowers, or decorative stones. The gauges come in all colors, sizes and shapes.
Consider installing a beautiful weather vane, which shows the direction that the wind is coming from. Any help that you can get in predicting the weather is going to assist you in your gardening efforts. Prior to the invention of the barometer, the only instrument that could assist humans in predicting the weather was the weather vane.
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Weather vanes often feature roosters. This practice came into being a thousand years ago when it was declared by papal edict that a symbol of a rooster was to be put on the top of every church. The rooster or cock is a reminder to the faithful to come to services as not to deny Christ as Peter had done. At some point, these roosters were changed to weather vanes or weathercocks. Ironically, Catholic churches no longer sport roosters but Protestant churches do.
Among weather products for your yard, flower garden or vegetable plot, every gardener needs an outdoor thermometer that features large numbers that can be easily read from a distance. You can mount the thermometer on a fence or exterior wall or in the eaves of your barn or other outdoor buildings. Knowing what the temperature is will help you take better care of your plants. When, for example, the thermometer indicates that it is getting cold, you may choose to lift certain plants and bring them indoors to be overwintered. An outdoor temperature gauge is a critically important garden weather instrument.
If you are intrigued by garden weather instruments that are also musical instruments, consider purchasing a rain chain, which is a great alternative to the closed gutter downspouts that are found on most homes. Water is collected in the rain chain. Rain chains are decorative and, when it is raining, a lovely sound can be heard emanating from the rain chains as water flows through the links or cups that make up the chains. The Japanese have used rain chains for hundreds of years to collect rain water. The chains are considered functional pieces of garden art as well as a decorative garden weather instrument. In Japan they are called Kusari Doi. When you collect rainwater, you can use it for any number or purposes, including irrigation.
If you really want to go all out in your garden, buy a wind harp. This is not necessarily a functional garden instrument but it is certainly a beautiful one and you will receive hours of audio pleasure listening to the sounds that are made when the wind is blowing.
Aeolian harps are named after the Greek God of Wind, Aeolus. The wind harps take the energy from the wind and turn it into musical sounds. These wind harps were very popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were placed in caves and in the windows in castles. Italian scientists tried to use Aeolian harps to predict the weather. Nowadays, we can hear Aeolian tones coming from telephone and power lines when the wind is blowing.
Resources:
Weather Vane and Cupola History
Mohican Wind Harp History
About Rain Gauges