In a perfect world I would spend the first few days of the New Year pruning the apple trees in the orchard, waving occasionally to brightly-coated canal boaters chugging by beneath me. I love pruning fruit trees – it’s one of life’s great pleasures on a sunny winter day – the feel of the older hard rippled bark in the first strong branch crooks, the softer young, smooth stems with their fat fruiting buds, anticipating the hum of spring bees and the cascade of fruit which will follow. Then there’s the sheer grin-inducing pleasure of hauling myself up into a large old tree, a less lithe echo of my 10 year old scruffy self shinning up a walnut tree in the local park, throwing green walnuts on the kids below. What is there not to love about it?

But apple tree pruning will have to wait a week or two this year. The cold snap has frozen the ground solid – the pond is frozen hard enough to walk over and the ground is so stiff that bare soil doesn’t move a fraction if I jump on it. I’m reluctant to walk on the grass too much as it will damage it. The canal was frozen an inch thick yesterday, despite daily through traffic. A canal boat plowed through a few minutes after I took the first picture, the ice creaking and humming ahead of the boat before splintering and shearing off into huge, bobbing slabs.

Cat on ice. Not impressed?

How about Dave on ice?

The few hours of weak sunlight each day are just enough to soften the frost on south-facing slopes before the freeze returns overnight (The solar water heater is still getting to 40C on good days btw!). The sunlight cheers me up wonderfully – the grim, gloomy, dirty-ice days earlier in December left me feeling similarly dispirited. It feels good to feel good, if that makes sense.

Today’s sunshine enticed me to try out a treasured Christmas present – a new fixed 50mm lens for my camera, recommended to me by Jane Burkinshaw. Having no zoom takes a bit of getting used to, but the clarity and intensity of the images was plain to see straight away. The berries are from the Sorbus ‘Joseph Rock’ which the birds have yet to strip. The cockerel is from the batch that we hatched in May – isn’t he a beauty?


January 3, 2010