What a Christmas!

I cannot remember the last time we had snow on the ground at Christmas, not proper deep(ish) snow anyway.  It was icy cold (minus 11 on Christmas eve night, didn't get above freezing all day Christmas and minus 11 on Christmas night), with deep frost and sparkles everywhere.  Deep blue sky and sunshine with Dartmoor giving it's best winter display in the distance.  Pure magic.

Christmas Eve evening started the magic with the film 'Prince Caspian'.  Us 3 girls were raised on C.S. Lewis and my eldest sister even wrote to him (and got a letter back - a long long time ago); and my youngest nephew is named after the prince; I have never met another Caspian, wonder if there are any others?

Then Christmas morning bright and clear and a visit to our friends to deposit presents for their two little girls and a glass of pop (for M not me I was driving) and some very pleasant company in front of the fire before coming back home again to our own fire, lots of pressies and a roast chicken.  I was going to do a goose but chickened out and it is in the freezer to be cooked on a day when I am not so distracted by pressies!  That evening we had a very close flyby of our resident barn owl, so white you could almost miss her against the snow.

Boxing day morning saw the barn owl sitting on the fence by the chicken run, quite undisturbed by me opening the front door, but when I went back to get the camera she decided it was time to take off; a real shame as she was so close and so still, it would have made a wonderful picture.  Instead I managed to get some lovely photos of the sun rising over a very white Dartmoor.

Then the thaw came and quickly, on Boxing day morning we went for a walk round the lanes, still covered in crisp powdery snow, but the evening it had turned to mush and now all the white has gone and the green is back (and I have found a row of carrots in the veggie patch again).  We did have some Christmas excitement though; not like last year when M's car slid into the back of mine on the drive because of the ice; but also ice related.  On Christmas morning we noticed that our water supply had gone a little brown and the flow was reduced. We boiled all drinking water and hoped we hadn't got frozen pipes.  Boxing day morning, no water at all in the house, lucky we had filled up some receptacles the day before.  Thankfully one of the outbuildings still had water so we collected big containerfuls and boiled what we needed for drinking.  Yesterday morning water back on, no brown and flow back to normal.  Need to keep an eye on this and let the landlord know (the water company will only deal with leaks on their network and the house is a good 50 yards from that so it is probably on our land).  Must have been that the mains comes in through the kitchen along the back wall which is north facing and for two nights well below freezing.  Oh the joys of rural living!

So is the winter weather over?  Who knows, it is only December and for the last two years the worst of the weather has been in January and February, so it probably isn't over yet.

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays whether or not the celebrated the season.