Frozen solid

Tuesday morning was cold. When I opened the curtains I knew the temperature had really dropped overnight because the back garden was covered in thick frost. Our garden is quite sheltered so it's rare for us to get any at all. The whole garden was frozen solid, even empty pots with several inches of water sitting in them were frozen all the way to the bottom. I managed to get a massive piece of ice out of the bucket collecting water from the broken guttering.

This slab of ice was sitting in an empty plant pot.

Noisy sparrows were perched on the roof of the old building overlooking our garden, probably squawking to tell me to hurry up and get the meal worms out.

A blackbird has started visiting our back garden regularly. I often stand and look out the back door while I eat my breakfast and see him fly in for his. He likes rooting around the hydrangea pot so I scatter some meal worms in the pot for him to find.

This morning he was pecking at a completely frozen bird bath!

Elsewhere in the garden things were just as frozen. Our lambs lettuce was dusted with a thick layer of frost. I'm hoping it won't have gone tough.

The kale is still going strong! The soil around it was so hard I could stand on it without it giving way.

This was a piece of ice I picked out of the watering can. Underneath the thick layer of ice on top were these icicles; I thought they looked a bit like ferns.

The homemade bottle cloches I made at the end of last year are doing their job. I took cuttings a little late and although they rooted they didn't get very large before winter set in. I was worried about them dying in the cold so I put these on top. They've worked a treat.

At lunchtime everything was still frozen so I went outside and smashed up the slabs of ice just for the sake of breaking things. Bit brutish of me but it was surprisingly satisfying!