We awoke last Saturday morning to a world iced with white. There is something special about the first snow of the season, particularly if you are up early to enough to appreciate its untouched beauty. Having dug up my dahlias - to my enormous relief - at the beginning of last week, I had spent the rest of the week catching up with indoor jobs. So when the sun came out by mid morning on Saturday it provided the perfect photo opportunity. The shed shown above is in the orchard and as the roof is reasonably weatherproof we use it to store the logs we split in the summer. In a past life it had been used as a hen house, although when we 'liberated' the orchard the integral nest boxes had all but rotted away. We have cleared quite a lot of the undergrowth at this end of the orchard and hope to keep hens in there ourselves at some point but we are are ever mindful of the presence of Mr Fox. When we lived in Wales our children spent their Easter egg money one year on hens that would lay them real eggs. In the run up to Christmas that same year Mr Fox visited nightly for his chicken dinner, leaving the very last one for his Christmas lunch!
These footprints probably belong to a cat but we have seen fox tracks criss-crossing the allotment during snowy weather in the past and quite often spot their russet forms amidst the undergrowth in the darker winter months. They do not trouble us, though the dogs catch their scent, and probably keep our rabbit population in check.
Some of our apple trees still have a few fruit clinging on. We have eleven apple tree altogether and with the bumper crop we've had this year that means an awful lot of windfalls. Last year we left them where they fell but this year we took the advice of the charity East of England Apples and Orchards Project and barrowed them to the north side of the orchard. This means that they are still available for wildlife to feed from but, since our prevailing winds are from the south, substantially reduces the risk of any potential disease spores or pests from re-infecting the tree via rotting fruit. The snow and the leaf together on this Bramley does rather remind me of a hat, with the icicle providing the tassel on the end!
Here are some of those windfalls after our resident wildlife have been feasting. I have been careful to tip each barrow load close to the hedge so that the feeding site is both sheltered from the weather and affords some protection from would-be predators. Presumably, that which is not eaten will rot down and provide nutrients to feed the hedge itself.
Likewise, there is a good crop of berries on the ivy, too. Ivy flowers quite late in the season and provides a much-needed food source for bees and other insects once other flowers are over. On sunny days in September and October this plant hummed with winged visitors and though the ivy is troublesome if it runs unchecked into the trees, it is welcome to its place in the boundary hedge.
I was also intrigued by the patterns the snow created on very familiar objects like the roof, above, and the pallets, below, and the contrast it created with the bright stems and berries, further below.
Since Saturday, though, we have had more and more snow culminating today in heavy showers more or less non-stop throughout the afternoon and this evening. We now have about seven inches of the sort of wet snow that sticks to the washing line and the telephone wires and renders them thick as ropes. And the forecast? Well more of the same, actually. So while my daughter, Lu', in London is just celebrating her first flakes we are all but buried up to our ears. Not to mention how cold our toes are growing. Never mind; it won't be long till Spring. Tiddely pom!!!
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