We woke this morning to see the garden white with the hail that had fallen in the night but by the afternoon most of it had melted away.
Up in the hen run this little sparrow waited in one of the apples trees for me to leave so that he could share the corn I had thrown on the ground for the hens. It didn't feel too cold out as there was no wind at all and the sun was shining. It took me a while to get organised to work outside and then I kept getting diverted from my original task of finishing the pond and weeding the heather banks. First I went to put up a new fat ball for the wild birds. This hangs alongside the nut feeder over the stream to stop the squirrel from raiding all the birds' food. Each time I've been out there I've meant to remove some brambles that have appeared and today I finally got round to doing so. Then I carried on and cut back and cleared more brambles growing on the far side of the stream. It's not our land but as it's so close to the house I do have permission to cut back the trees and undergrowth there.
There are several clumps of daffodils there that began flowering at the end of Dec, I can see these ones through the window by my piano in the sitting room. Having cleared most of the brambles that were growing down to the stream I then cut down a 20ft branch of a cob nut tree that was growing picturesquely over the stream but almost reaching the house, (that was with my trusty bow saw).
As I walked around in the stream I was most surprised to see some frogspawn in the flowing water. I expect it had been washed down from one of the small pools higher up the valley. I released it from the stone where it had been caught and let it carry on its journey down to my neighbour's lake. That reminded me that I had planned to do more work at the pond, actually I took my camera to see if there was anything happening up there. No frog or toad spawn but looking down through the clear water there were suspicious movements and bubbles under the pond plants.
There was a thin film of ice over the pond and some clear reflections of the surrounding trees.
I finished off my outdoor work by bringing down and cutting up enough wood for a fire tonight and then doing a bit of weeding before the light started to fade.
We woke this morning to see the garden white with the hail that had fallen in the night but by the afternoon most of it had melted away.
Up in the hen run this little sparrow waited in one of the apples trees for me to leave so that he could share the corn I had thrown on the ground for the hens. It didn't feel too cold out as there was no wind at all and the sun was shining. It took me a while to get organised to work outside and then I kept getting diverted from my original task of finishing the pond and weeding the heather banks. First I went to put up a new fat ball for the wild birds. This hangs alongside the nut feeder over the stream to stop the squirrel from raiding all the birds' food. Each time I've been out there I've meant to remove some brambles that have appeared and today I finally got round to doing so. Then I carried on and cut back and cleared more brambles growing on the far side of the stream. It's not our land but as it's so close to the house I do have permission to cut back the trees and undergrowth there.
There are several clumps of daffodils there that began flowering at the end of Dec, I can see these ones through the window by my piano in the sitting room. Having cleared most of the brambles that were growing down to the stream I then cut down a 20ft branch of a cob nut tree that was growing picturesquely over the stream but almost reaching the house, (that was with my trusty bow saw).
As I walked around in the stream I was most surprised to see some frogspawn in the flowing water. I expect it had been washed down from one of the small pools higher up the valley. I released it from the stone where it had been caught and let it carry on its journey down to my neighbour's lake. That reminded me that I had planned to do more work at the pond, actually I took my camera to see if there was anything happening up there. No frog or toad spawn but looking down through the clear water there were suspicious movements and bubbles under the pond plants.
There was a thin film of ice over the pond and some clear reflections of the surrounding trees.
I finished off my outdoor work by bringing down and cutting up enough wood for a fire tonight and then doing a bit of weeding before the light started to fade. 
