Tundra

Snow plastered against the Leylandii hedge

The garden is in shut-down mode.  Winter is definitely still here.  We had a centimetre or two of snow on Thursday night, with a freezing wind that plastered the snow against anything east-facing, then more on Saturday morning.  Some intermittent above-zero temperatures have thawed the snow in patches, so there's a sort of piebald effect on the ground - neither a bright snow-covering nor a snow-free landscape, just a sort of untidy mess; the ground is frozen hard, cracking and creaking underfoot, and the garden has a bleached and colourless look.  And a bitter, unrelenting east wind.

'Blue Pearl' crocuses braving the wind

So no gardening at the weekend.  I should have retreated to the garage to sow some seeds to germinate indoors, but it was just too cold.  Even venturing out in search of a few flowers to cut for a vase didn't yield much: one Viburnum 'Dawn' bloom, a very few winter honeysuckle flowers and some Viburnum tinus - and all of those had to have the snow sprayed off them so that they didn't suffer frost damage.  Even the crocuses seem to be cowering in the wind.  The only ray of light was from the old flower-heads of the Big Yellow Thing (Bupthalmum? - a sort of Inula, anyway), which I leave in place for architectural effect in winter; every little dried flower-head had a little tuft of snow on it, which looked slightly comical.

The birds have been coming to feed regularly - mostly the usual suspects, though we had a greater spotted woodpecker on the nut feeder this morning.  The woodpigeons look particularly unhappy, with the wind blowing their feathers apart unless they can face into it.  We had some sun today which melted some of the ice on the pond, so at least there's water for drinking and bathing.

No relief in sight in the weather forecast - it's more of the same, right into, and probably beyond, the weekend.  That takes us into April, with lots of the March jobs still incomplete; and a freezing Easter weekend means that I can't take advantage of the days off to do them.  British Summer Time starts on Sunday.  Where's spring?