Emma and the Beast

Road to nowhere

So the 'Beast from the East' finally bit.  The east of the country bore the brunt of the first onslaught of snow mid-week, while we got away with the low temperatures but dry weather; but then the Beast met Storm Emma coming up from Iberia bringing damp air, and the result was a substantial dump of snow - lovely dry powdery stuff, quite unlike what we usually get.  It also brought gale-force winds which swept the snow into drifts; the actual snowfall probably wasn't much more than a few inches, but the drifting was impressive - open areas such as the fields were left with relatively little snow (and our patio and paths were almost completely free of it) while it piled up high in the roads, to hedge-top height in places, cutting the village off for the most part (a very few brave souls with 4x4s made it out via the back lanes).  Four days later the main road to the village is still blocked, although temperatures started to rise yesterday and it's all now thawing.  There is still a reasonable depth of snow on the lawn, especially where it had drifted (over 2ft in places).

Snow on the lawn

There's a pond somewhere under there ....

The strong winds blew some of the fine, powdery snow through the narrow gaps around garage doors and greenhouse windows; several villagers have found little piles of snow in their garden buildings, including me.  I was a bit bemused to find it snowing lightly inside the greenhouse!  I put some newspaper over the heater to protect it, but some snow gathered behind the bubblewrap and built up on some of the lettuce seedlings (which are to be discarded anyway, because of the mouse).

At least some of the wildlife made advance preparations against the cold.  One day a little woodmouse spent quite some time gathering crumbs put out for the birds and taking them under the patio door steps.  Is he the Beast from the Greenhouse, I wonder?

The Beast from the Greenhouse?

The wind, once it picked up, made it difficult to put out crumbs for the birds - they just blew away - so the apples and fatballs were the mainstays of my bird-feeding.  Various blackbirds enjoyed the apples, as did a mistle thrush which commandeered one apple, sitting by it all day and chasing off all comers.  A song thrush appeared once, only to be seen off by a blackbird, and a fieldfare called by too.  There were some very anxious-looking dunnocks, trying to warm their feet by standing on one leg at a time and tucking the other up, and scavenging for any scraps of food they could find.  A greenfinch and bullfinch also came - the bullfinch enjoyed a bath this morning - and so did a marsh tit, the first I've seen for a year or so.

There hasn't been a lot of gardening done lately, for obvious reasons!  I need to prune the apple trees and the buddleja, but not in this weather.  Before the snow I did manage to sow my tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and chillies, which have been germinating on a radiator indoors and are now starting to shoot.  At this rate it will be a while before I entrust them to the temperatures in the greenhouse.