... then plunged back into winter

 And so, just as we were about to topple headlong into spring ... 

we get this ... 

 

and it's all a bit deeply disappointing. If beautiful.

I got out of bed early yesterday - my day off - to take the Northerner to the train station. There was a lot of snow to get off the car before we could leave, and after a bit he suggested that he might have got there quicker if he'd walked, and then that he was wetter than if he'd walked, whereupon I said I was upper than if he'd walked and we left it at that. In the end he was in more than good time for his train - it was delayed - and Cwtch and I got the early morning walk, before all the golfers didn't turn up because you can't see a golf ball in the snow.

The snow was a bit deeper than the fall we had in December, and Cwtch was ... well, after some initial incredulity, she was having a fine time. 

last year's hogweed getting ready to hurl some snowballs

wild carrot with a crown of snowy velvet

emerging from Rooky Wood which had missed most of the snow

catkins looking considerably less jaunty that before

down by the ditch

There was some discontent in the rookery, possibly at this Unexpected Turn of Events. 

Today I'd intended to walk out over the farmland but Cwtch had other ideas and made a collie-line for the Small Dark Wood of the Mind, and since the forecasted 40% chance of precipitation was precipitating with 100% determination, I acquiesced to her demand. 

It was slippy-slidey through the wood ...

... though easier-going in the field.

All the same, I didn't fancy paddling along the badger pad. 

Cwtch didn't fancy getting her paws wet either, so leapt what was the ditch yesterday but a full-on winterbourne today.

the hollowing oak full of long-tailed tits

a magpie flickering across the field like something out of a vintage news reel

twin oaks, one stuck in autumn, the other still trimmed with Christmas lights that are raindrops

Both days there were tracks in the field, but yesterday, they were partially snowed over and it was hard to see what they were. Today they were clearer but I'm still not entirely sure ... I suppose because the snow is so late, the ones on the right could be hedgehog tracks?