It Grows No More

My icicle obsession is over. 9am this morning it had reached 46 inches. 10.30am it was gone.  :-(

All in pieces.

Can't Keep Up

With the wild birds that is. Half a sack of seed has gone in one week. I think we will have to put them on rations.
I tried to take a picture of them, but they were disturbed by something and flew away. I'm thrilled to see that we are being visited by a couple of Tree Sparrows. They were plentiful when I was a little girl and now are a rare sight. I remember my Dad teaching me the difference between the House, Tree and Hedge (Dunnock) Sparrow, the lawn was full of all three of them eating the scraps we had put out.

Bad light, steam on the window, too cold to go out. All makes for a terrible photo :-)

The icicle has grown. 42 inches now. 

It isn't growing where anyone is likely to walk below it, but I wonder if  it is safe to leave it there?
Look how grey the sky is.

Icicles.

We've got some beautiful icicles hung from the roof. I couldn't get the longest one in the camera frame, no matter what angle I tried. I should have opened the window, but I didn't want to let the cold in the house. So I put on a coat and tried from outside, but that didn't work either. I think it must be nearly three feet long and two inches thick.

I've just had a tape measure out and it's roughly 32". I wonder if it will have grown tomorrow?

A Tribute

I would like to pay a tribute to our milkman, who has valiantly slipped and slid his way through all this awful snow to deliver our milk. He's a star. I've just seen my neighbours coal being delivered as well. Resourceful, luckily his other hat is a farmers.

The White Stuff

It Was Cold but Worth It

Well! The snow came, but it timed itself just right to allow me to go on my planned "outings". The local weather forecast sounded favorable, so we braved it and headed off, first for York. The road out of our village hadn't been gritted and had to be negotiated carefully, but we made it to the main road and that was clear. In York we met up with "Dizzy Daughter" and then had a train ride to Leeds. Leeds City Centre didn't seem to have had any snow, so luckily there was no slipping and sliding under foot. I tried to get pictures of our destination, but they were so blurred I can't show them. Well, maybe I'll show two of them and then you can see how bad they were.

I'm blaming the cold for making me shake.

What were we doing at Leeds Town Hall? We were there for this:-

I think I need a new camera.

It was well worth the effort in getting there and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
That was on Thursday. Friday night brought more snow, and Saturday morning was a 7.30am start.
Where to this time?
Once again the dodgy road out of the village and still only -2deg. This time the main road was not quite so clear. It had been treated, but there were still short stretches of icy snow. Again the first destination was York railway station, and again I met up with "Dizzy Daughter". This time we were taking the train to Harrogate, our final destination being the "Knitting and Stitching Show". Ooh! that was fun, but a bit hard on the bank balance. Well it does only come around once a year.
We headed home on the 5pm train and then walked through the centre of York, which was feeling very festive, St Nicholas Fair was on and people were very merry, it must have been the hot chestnuts and mulled wine. By the time we reached "Dizzy Daughters" house our fingers were so cold they hurt and I was feeling very tired. The "Old Grump" came to pick me up and a plan was hatched to call for fish and chips for supper, which we did and we were glad of them, because by the time we arrived home at 7.30pm it was already -5deg. and we needed something hearty to warm us up.

I was just going to publish this post, when I happened to look out of the window and LOOK:-

Here it comes again, SNOW. The shiny blob is the room light reflecting in the window.

Outings.

I don't get the chance for many special outings these days, so why, when I have two planned for later this week have they forecast snow? Harrumph!


On the upside, at this time of year I get to eat these:-

Hot Roasted Chestnuts

All Gone, Yum Yum.