Garden flora and fauna

After weeks of snow and freezing weather, we have a change. Yesterday we awoke to a cold, snow covered day. As time passed the temperature rose somewhat, this was followed by rain, light at first then becoming a heavy torrential downpour, which lasted well into the night.

At 2:00 a.m. when I looked out , the majority of snow had melted, we were left with a white bank on the side of the garden facing the lounge --- when I arose this morning that too had vanished.

Across the orchard and fields the floods are back, in truth they never went, instead they turned into an enormous ice rink. A few days ago, a walk across to this ice showed fox prints traversing in every direction, however when I dared to walk on the frozen surface I soon discovered it was not as strong as it looked and I hastily moved off.

The continuous heavy rain, linked with yesterday's milder temperature has however brought with it a thaw, hence the flooding.

Today is again milder, there is a very strong wind, it sends the last of autumn's leaves hurrying and scurrying, hither and thither along the grass. The strong blustery wind also makes the washing on the line flap and crack alarmingly, and even worse threatens to pull the post supporting the line out of the ground at one end.

 This magical garden is still full of flowers, primroses, cyclamen, winter flowering jasmine, roses, arabis, aconites, snowdrops, the wonderfully scented pink flowered viburnum bodnantense, mahonia which is so beloved by insects and chaffinches and three types of catkins hazel, birch and the wonderful garrya ellyptica (also known as The Silk Tassel bush), the latter is an amazing sight, despite being hard pruned each year it just grows back and appears more beautiful each time it is in catkin.

The birds are very hungry and are needing extra rations, during the freeze I put water out for them, but it constantly needed redoing as it froze so quickly. The squirrel numbers have dropped to two, perhaps now the less cold weather is here we may see the missing ones. The foxes continue to feed each evening, however I haven't seen the badger recently and hope he hasn't succumbed to a fast car while crossing the lane.