A bright crisp morning, the pond is iced over as are the bird baths. The frost on the lawn, trees and bushes is thick and white and in the sunshine sparkles like diamonds.
I am in the lounge and look up to see a squirrel standing outside the patio door looking in, tiny hands clasped together and held at chest height. I have already fed the visitors to our garden, so he is either a latecomer or very hungry. I leave what I am doing to go to the kitchen and feed him, as always by the time I reach the kitchen window he is there waiting, standing on the feeding table peering through the window.
We are on our way to Oxfordshire to see our grandson, his lovely partner and our much loved great grandson. In the flooded fields there is no movement to be seen in the water, for it is frozen solid, gulls stand dejectedly by or balance on the ice, if the water is frozen so must the ground be, this is when food is hard to come by and when they usually visit gardens in the hope of finding sustenance.
We left our garden just a few minutes ago at ten twenty five and the lawn was still frostily white and glimmering in the sunlight. It is three degrees centigrade. The surprising sight for me is the green of the fields, I expected them to still be white as were our lawns, however they were only frostily white on the north and east facing edges.Across the fields we can view the river it is brimful, no wonder it tips over and fills the fields.
The sun is warm through the car window and I notice that at one point on the motorway, water running across the carriageway has frozen solid and formed an ice river, no doubt the action of tyres together with the now bright sun will soon cause it to melt.
Further on the left hand banks of the M25 are in shadow and still frostily white, while the right hand side are bright and bathed in sunlight. The sunshine picks out variations in the structure of the trees and lifts and highlights the wintry green mossy colour of their trunks and branches, making them eye catching and interesting to look at. Catkins on the hazel trees are lengthening and lightening in colour, making them very attractive, while beech trees are still holding fast to their shock of dead, rusty brown leaves, which I am sure would still crackle if you scrunched them together, they don't look at all soft but still crisp.
At one point we pass an apple tree still weighed down by hundreds of bright green apples but bereft of any leaves.
The sky has clouded over and without the sun the view from the windows seems dreary and winter grey.
We are on the M40 now and the journey is brightened by many hazel bushes of dangling catkins and bright yellow gorse bushes, we pass a field with an enormous gaggle of over one hundred Canada geese. Just past the Marlow turning on the M40 we see our first red kite circling high above the motorway and I hope he/she doesn't try to feed on the body of the fox we have just passed, it is too near passing vehicles for safety.
Further on we see another solitary red kite, they are very distinctive with their forked tails and wing markings and I wonder why they have both been alone. Suddenly there are six circling overhead and I am reassured these beautiful birds are still plentiful. We pass fields of sheep scattered across the grass and busily cropping it.
We turn off the M40 and as we do so I am surprised to see a ten foot stretch of winter flowering jasmine by the side of the road in full bloom and growing wild and free and forming a short hedge with its own beauty.
We pass through Little Milton a pretty Oxfordshire village of mellow stone. We are in Stadhampton now and at our journey's end.We will have a lovely time here with them plus from my grandsons window I shall see many varieties of birds which I will show my great grandson.
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