Icily Does It . . .

We haven't seen anything much in the way of snow in the rest of November, but it's remained really cold and icy.  The weekend was all freezing sunshine - and frozen garden.  The birds are really appreciating the bird feeders at the moment - peanuts, sunflower hearts, and fat balls are all going down well.


We don't see many starlings however, despite Aber being a bit of a starling hotspot - did catch one in the back garden at the weekend though, posing nicely with a daylit moon in the background:

Snow Day

I think that's what they call them - in places that really have the kind of snow that means people can't go anywhere - snow days . . .  Had a snow 'half-day' today.  This was the scene at 10.49am this morning, it did stop snowing by dinnertime, but came home anyway, while the going was good!

Didn't actually snow much this afternoon, but it is freezing (which just makes the snowy roads more treacherous).  Nice misty evening views across the valley:

And now we have heating again*, we can take the time to appreciate it!

* We've had a couple of weeks of intermittent heating - came back from a couple of days away on Monday 15 November to find that our oil-fired boiler was broke (kept blowing fuses on the control panel) - managed to get a heating engineer to come out on Thursday 18, he fitted a new control box and solenoid and we had heat again - all was well until Sunday 21 when the boiler repeatedly 'locked out' - had a boiler service booked for Thursday 25 anyway so made do with our plug-in radiators until then - Thursday 25 the engineer replaced the oil pump, but it still wouldn't work - later that day though we had a phone call from the engineer to say he'd realised he hadn't fitted it properly - back today, all fixed, heat!  Hoping it lasts this time!

Parsnip Crisps

Tried something new today - baked thin slices of parsnip in the rayburn - hey presto:

Parsnip crisps!  Might try potato next.

Close Up and Personal!

  . . . and so cute!

Winterfylleth

Time for another weather update - October, or Winterfylleth as the Anglo-Saxons apparently called it, is supposed to mark the beginning of Winter.  Apart from one day though it hasn't actually gotten that cold yet . . .

The beginning of November is also still quite warm at the moment - unfortunately we appear to be replicating last year's drenching and Bonfire Night is promising to be something of a damp squib!