We don’t really get cold winters in Southern England, not like the ones in Central Europe or North America…..well, until this year anyway. It’s the end of February and we’ve now had probably the coldest winter in at least 20 years (I’m sure the Met Office has stats on it but all their website really talks about today is the lack of rainfall). What’s more, even though we march on into March and certainly in my world, spring, on Wednesday, there is more snow and continued frozen weather forecast until at least Thursday, which is as far as the Met Office goes.

I know it’s not technically spring until mid-March but I just divvy up the months into equal chunks in my mind so Dec/Jan/Feb are winter, Mar/Apr/May are spring, Jun/Jul/Aug are summer and Sep/Oct/Nov are autumn – it makes it nice and easy to remember. Not that if feels remotely as though spring is only a few days away.

This block of ice came out of a bucket yesterday to make way for the shredded tree branches and when I saw it still frozen today, I picked it up to show to DM. As I pulled it from the garden, the light caught in the bubbles and that was it really – my brain went ‘ping’ and David said ‘there’s your pic’. So, here it is.

Today the sun has been glinting across the snow capped hills of Dartmoor, while clouds of every shade of purple, grey, pink, orange and white scudded across the landscape, throwing light and shadow across the moors in what just looked for all the world like nature dancing. We spend our time gawping, gasping and going ‘wow, look at that’. It’s never the same for more than a couple of moments. We never tire of it.

We’ve again been working hard – I ache so much that I wonder if I’ll ever recover and last night I slept for eleven hours unbroken – I can’t remember when I last did that. But it’s not all work and no play, today we spent a happy hour with our new neighbours, finding a bit more about the past of the house we’ve bought. They’ve been here for about twenty years and were able to supply us with a very old aerial photograph of the house that has been fascinating us for the rest of the day. Each time we pick it up, we notice some other difference with ‘now’.

The best bit for me is seeing the veggie plot, which I’m struggling manfully to bring back under control, functioning with lots of neat lines of things growing – of course you can’t see what’s what other than there are some runner beans because there is a tent of poles down one row. Our secret garden has changed beyond recognition, it had no paving back then and we can clearly see the fruit trees in leaf though we believe all four of them are now completely dead. It’s a fascinating retrospective of the house and its history.

What’s nicest about the pic is it shows the house in the full flush of summer – it looks like late summer because the lawns are quite brown but even so, it gives us something to look forward to…..

Last year I was enjoying the company of my favourite bunch of Phils.