Wintry weather

In fact we had a really good run back on Friday.  The roads were clear and only had light traffic.  The sun shone.  It was a good trip back.  We saw virtually no snow until we got to Mansfield.  Then the snow got more and more interesting.  Until we reached Tupton when it got extremely interesting indeed!

When we left last Saturday the garden looked like this:

When we got back, it looked like this:

It came as something of a shock!

We had to dig the chickens out!!  Fortunately, Steve had managed to keep them from getting covered over, but they only really had their little run to move about in.

We managed to get to the library and to the dairy and to Sainsbury's on Saturday.  The Sainsbury's car park was completely chaotic.  Someone had obviously gone around with a plough or some such and created huge mountains of snow, leaving a few areas where people could park their cars.  The store itself was crammed - but no sign of any food shortages :-)

The Builder set to and dug tunnels through the garden.  One tunnel down to the chickens.  One for the cat to get to the shrubs.  One for us to reach the bird table.  Marlo thinks the tunnels are great!

We were sat in the lounge room on Saturday evening, minding our own businesses, doing nobody any harm, when suddenly there came a thunk on the front window, followed fairly swiftly after by another one.  Bloody kids, throwing snowballs at the window.  The Builder raced off outside to roar at them.  The kids were well up the road by the time he got out there!!  He came in and sat down again.  And suddenly there was a roaring from above, followed by a scruntling, followed by a whooshing - and half a roof's worth of snow came avalanching down onto the front yard, filling it up almost to the top of the wall.  Pity the kids weren't still out the front!!!

Yesterday Tabitha, Gareth, Rich, Marryk, Fiona, John and the German shepherd Madeleine came for lunch.  Everyone managed to navigate safely here, although Rich said it took a bit of doing digging his car out of the snow.  Marlo was a bit surprised when we let him out of our bedroom after Madeleine had gone home, to find both his dishes had been licked entirely clean!  So had the dishes on the dining room table - although they had not actually been licked and certainly not by Madeleine.  But there weren't any leftovers for breakfast this morning!!

The thermometer on the back wall read minus 11 when I went down to liberate the chickens this morning.  The one on the grape trellis read minus 18.  Was a touch on the chilly side