The garden in December 2022

Dear Readers, the temperature has dropped here in London, and the pond has frozen over for the first time since last winter. The street outside was filled with the sound of windscreens being scraped, and my trip to the coffee shop was enlivened by trying to avoid all the patches of ice created when people wash down their shopfronts, only for the water to freeze into a mini ice-rink. And today we might have snow, which is massively inconvenient as we’re out to the theatre to see Sigourney Weaver as Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ (review to follow). But still, the child in me is always excited by that strange light through the curtains on a snowy day, or the sight of snowflakes billowing down.

Incidentally, why is ‘snowflake’ such an insult, when snowflakes en masse can bring  everything to a halt? Just wondering….

The bird table, 2022

I love that there are certain birds that only ever arrive when it’s snowing – we had a fieldfare in the crab apple tree for a week in the snow of 2011, and  siskins always pop in for a feed when there’s lots of the white stuff, but not at any other time.

Siskins in 2017

The one and only time that I had a brambling in the garden was on a snowy day.

Brambling 2017

But even if it doesn’t snow,  we’re promised sub-zero temperatures on and off for the next week or so, and I’m always stunned by the beauty that’s revealed by ice, especially if one has a hat/gloves/a thick coat/some thermals. Just look at the spiders’ webs from a few years ago, and how the ice reveals their structure in a way that nothing else can. So much beauty! A true small pleasure. It’s hard to get out and about when it’s cold, but it’s absolutely worth it.