The Garden in the Snow & New Family Members

So, it would appear that we’ve been having a wee bit of snow lately!

This was the view from inside our garden gate, up the drive and on to the road last week. THERE IS NO ROAD!

The snow fell really heavily and weighed down branches of the heaviest trees. Trees fell in to the roads and power lines were brought down. We had almost two days without any power at all and it was getting COLD in the house by the time the lights finally bounced in to life again. Even the AGA wasn’t making much difference by the second day as it struggled to keep up with the outside temperatures.

Robert the Husband spent a good few hours over two days clearing the way for us to, first, open the garden gate and then digging the cars out. But even after all the digging, the roads had frozen in to streams of glass like ice and it all got a bit treacherous.

But apart from the hassle and inconvenience of the snowfall it did give me a fantastic insight into how the garden functions when covered in inches and inches of the white stuff. And of course it’s beautiful and quiet out there with all the sounds muffled.

A dash of colour against the white. Hanging on in there almost cryogenically frozen.

Icicles formed on the Honeysuckle almost overnight! I had a certain amount of rescuing to do around the place after such a heavy fall but nothing was damaged. It just all needed a little shake to rid itself of the weight it was suddenly carrying.

Robert grabbed one of the icicles. Not sure how he does the whole ‘t-shirt in the snow’ thing with such aplomb but he had just been shoveling snow so I suppose he was hot. I offered him one of my 32 “thin not too thick” layers but he declined. Tough nut!

Mmmmmm, lovely! Pure enough to bite into.

Aha!
Ian’s out today. Hello small red one.

Betsy too!

And then Ian arrived on here too as we were topping up the bird feed. We definitely have more than one Ian , which is of course BRILLIANT!

But let me introduce you to another member of the garden family. This is Fenella Pheasant and he has been wandering around quite regularly lately (didn’t want to call him Frank or Fred & here’s a link to a picture of male and female Pheasants). Pheasant and Grouse (two of which were walking across our drive on Saturday afternoon) are silly things and plop out in front of cars all the time in this area. And I know that because of the snow some of the shooting season has been curtailed so there may be a few more about than usual. But we’re happy for them to wander about in our garden for the time being although I’m not quite sure how long they’ll like it for.

I would urge you, if you have a garden frequented by birds, please feed them if you still have lots of snow on the ground. Do your research and find out what your type of garden birds like to eat and please put some out for them. It’s terribly difficult for them to feed themselves in deep and heavy snow, especially when it lasts for days. It’s also really great to watch them congregate all day every day around the feeders. They chat and play and feed themselves until ready to head off again. You’ll also find yourself getting really attached to the birds that visit and it’s great to get the warm fuzzies knowing that you’ve helped them out of a pickle.

Ian the Robin however likes to hang out with us and helped Robert the Husband clear the gates while I sat on a chair and watched.

I’m serious…here’s my chair in the snow. The one I sat on.

I sat on it for ages watching the proceedings as I was having all those tuggy sensations that you get as the babies grow. To be honest it was just as cold inside the house so I might as well have been out with the boys.

Here’s the other boy…