First snow

When we moved down here we were told that they never get snow.  Last two winters have been very snowy and our first sprinkle arrived on Thursday morning.  Big proper snow yesterday, settling quickly on the drive and roads, great fun getting to my friends for my annual hair cut!  Then it sleeted and then started a short thaw, result this morning is thick ice everywhere.  BMW now grounded for the winter!  Thank goodness for the 4x4 (although that isn't much good in ice as we discovered last Christmas day when it slid slowly and gracefully into the back of my parked car, now parked at the top of the drive so hopefully if we do take it out it won't do it again).  Minus 3 at 08.30 this morning and still at 10.30 below freezing, nice!  Fully stocked up so we will be OK for a few days...

Had to stop this for an hour as M told me we have sheep!  7 strays now fully enclosed in a field and trying to find out who they belong too.  Unfortunately you can't get close enough to them to see their ear tags, hopefully someone will claim them after my phone calls.  Also this year had had stray cattle and currently there is a stray fox hound in the vicinity, again someone is supposed to be coming today to try to catch him, what is it about our place and animals.  Also since I started writing it has started snowing again despite a forecast of sunshine!

Must go and start preparing the curry for tonight and marinade some chicken.  Hope everyone in the Northern Hemisphere is warm and dry! :)

Another month

Busy busy, mostly with the beads, having a lovely time at my mentor's studio, but really got to get my own lamp and equipment.  Have a new blog too now just devoted to the beads if anyone is interested (mind you that needs updating too!) http://greenglassbeads-devon.blogspot.com/.

Also we had friends to stay for the half term week, they opted to camp (mad things), but it was a lovely posh bell tent.  Sadly the boys chickened out and spent most of the week in the house - wimps!  We had some good days on the beach and the boys went up into Dartmoor to get lost - I think they did too.

I have been reading a great book on Dartmoor, written in 1900 by a mad Vicar called Sabine Baring-Gould.  He wrote many books on this part of the world and also wrote an introduction to Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles at one point.  He also wrote a biography of another mad vicar from this part of the work, the famous Reverend Hawker of Morwenstow fame who I have written about before.

All the veggies are now finished and we have had our first hard frost, unfortunately this was also the night the chicken got locked out of her house.  Thankfully she survived both minus 2 degree temperatures and the fox, poor thing.

Charlie is still coping with his diabetes, not sure how, but is currently sitting in my chair! whilst I perch on the edge trying to write this.

We had a lovely day at Mum and Dad's too last weekend when it was Dad's 90th birthday.  I made one of my fudge cakes but unfortunately managed to forget to take the greaseproof paper of the bottom of one of the cakes and my lovely niece had to dissect it out!

After our day at Mum and Dad's we had a good and very long walk into the depths of Dartmoor from Belstone.  It was a beautiful day, sunny and not too cold.  Had to ford a few streams again, but it wouldn't be a walk on Dartmoor without getting your feet a bit wet!  We went up to the head of the Taw river along ancient (and modern) tracks and ate our lunch sitting on top of Oke Taw, just lovely.  Feel very stiff now, but I suppose that means it was doing us good.  Have a new Camera and took a few photos, need to get the software loaded so I can upload them to the blog. :)