Frosty morning

I didn't heed the weather forecast ...

... they had told me last night that in rural areas the temperatures were likely to go down to minus 4, but because of a similar forecast 2 days earlier when the water was still running through the hose and there were just flimsy bits of ice on some buckets the following morning I ignored the warning -         and paid the price: filling bucket after bucket with water from the kitchen and carrying it outside to fill the breakfast bowls first and then the drinking containers.

Because their first port of call, the frog pond, was frozen over and the 5 water containers below it had solid ice on them, they took the hump and ran off into the orchard .....

... where they seemed to find plenty of interest to them.

The walnut tree had pretty iced edgings to its leaves.  It's quite a size now, and I'm hoping it will start producing walnuts in a couple of years' time.


My treasured "Hollywood" plum tree has yet to bear fruit as well.

Dotty on her tod.  I love the way I have to give her an extra invitation to hop out of her little pond. Then she stands up, beats her wings vigorously, dips her beak into the food container a few times and the water, and then hops onto the top of the ramp and into the hut - where the other four or five [depending on whether Anke has decided to sleep in the shed where Jay is or not!] have already preceded her, Billie-Jean always leads them in.

I was wondering why I couldn't see my ducks in the orchard any more.  Crunching over the icy grass I eventually found them this side of the near-empty big pond.  As their frog pond was frozen over they went back to the place where they spent nearly all their days ..... until that pond sprang a leak.