Saturday, February 10, 2007

Gotcha! We're snowed in!

Well, we got blasted, didn't we?

I shouldn't have suggested that it might be spring already.

The picture on the left is of my lovely clump of bamboo, now flattened by snow. After I took that, yesterday, I went out and shook off all the stems (getting totally covered in snow in the process). They sprang back somewhat, but after another hour of heavy snow they were right back to the positions shows in the photo. And this morning they were almost completely buried in the heavy, wet, white stuff!

We had a visit from Trevor (John's old school friend) and Chris last weekend and were able to go out for walks and admire all the pretty flowers that were out. The village green has been covered in a carpet of mauve crocusses and the banks of snowdrops are really magnificent. We also had a smashing Sunday lunch at the carvery in the Railway Inn in Marshbrook. We realised we were in for a treat when we met not only the owners of the local restaurant, but also the owners of the local deli! It has to be good if they patronize it!!!!

On Wednesday it was the turn of some old McMaster friends to visit. Dolly came down from Chester and Jane (with daughter, Kim) came over from Canada. It was a cold but sunny day and we enjoyed a good walk over Rectory Field and along the Allen Coppice Sculpture trail. There are some more animal sculptures now - more owls, a woodpecker and various other lovely things.

We knew the forecast was for snow, so seeing Mary at the top of the hill we asked if our friends could keep their cars in her drive overnight. She said yes, so we moved them up there.

In the evening we kept switching over to the 24 hour news channel to keep an eye on the weather. They were calling for "heavy" snow to roll in over night. I was so exited by having friends there and the thought of snow that I couldn't sleep very well and got up to watch the first of the snow. I was able to watch a mouse collecting peanuts on the patio for about an hour before I finally felt sleepy enough to go back to bed.

In the morning it became clear that no-one was going anywhere. I really didn't expect to get much snow, and actually we only had a couple of inches on the ground, but that's enough to paralyse things in this country and we watched story after story of traffic and travel chaos. Jane called her mum and told her she was waiting it out and we sat around talking and trying to decide what to do.

Early in the afternoon, Dolly decided to go for it and after we'd walked up to Mary's with her, saw her off and looked at the state of the roads, Jane decided to leave too. Both sets called later to say that they'd had easy journeys with very little traffic and clear roads. That's because all the media had asked people to stay home and stop contributing to the chaos!!!!!

So we thought the worst was over. We were wrong. Yesterday it started snowing again. It snowed all day, sometimes heavily, and we ended up with more than 8 inches on the ground. The pictures of the driveway above and John feeding the birds (to the left) were taken yesterday and there was more snow on top of that.

Overnight last night the thaw started. Now there are avalanches of heavy, wet snow falling out of the laurels and onto my shrubs. Many of them are bent to the ground and some have snapped or have root damage. It looks as though there's going to be even more pruning this spring than I'd planned! We've shaken off some of the most vulnerable plants, but there's still a lot that will just have to fend for themselves.

The forecast shows a drier, warmer trend for the next week so you can guess where I'm going to be and what I'm going to be doing before our next visitors arrive next weekend!

Keep those e-mails coming, please!