Freeze

Knowing that we had a busy day in store, I flung on multiple layers of clothing as soon as I emerged from under the duvet this morning, and rushed out into a freezing dawn to photograph the frost on the old farm wall that forms one of our garden boundaries. There were some spectacular crystals, but the light, inevitably at that time, was flat and boring. So I went back inside, thawed out, and did a couple of useful domestic tasks, all the while keeping an eye on the eastern sky. As soon as the sun cleared the tall hedge on the far side of the lane I whisked back out and re-shot my chosen subjects, and even though the sun was now melting the ice crystals almost as fast as I could focus the macro on them, the sparkly bokeh that had suddenly appeared was a nice compensation. This little patch of Grey-cushioned Grimmia was in an especially deep frost pocket, so it provided both good crystals and good bokeh.

At lunch time R and I drove over to Monmouth to meet L and Baby B, and bring him home with us for the weekend. I won't pretend that we weren't nervous about this, because if he tolerates us until Sunday, when we're scheduled to return him to his parents, it will be the longest time he's spent in our house without at least one of them being here too. It's quite possible therefore that tomorrow's post will be a chagrined account of us having to deliver him back home early, but for today at least, he was happy, relaxed and charming - so if everything goes pear-shaped in the morning, we'll just have to hold on to the memory of a very lovely afternoon.

Because he'd already done an hour in the car, from home to Monmouth, B wasn't best pleased about being pinned down again for the drive over the border into England, so we decided to get him as quickly as possible to somewhere he'd never been before, but which we thought he'd like and where he could run around and work off some energy. The Broadway Tower seemed a reasonable prospect, and it turned out to have been a good choice. He wouldn't countenance more than a single mouthful of the three (three!!) pieces of cake we bought in the café (cake in his world being Swedish cardamom bun, or a slice of Irwin's fruit loaf), but he did very much like the babyccino they made for him, and he was enchanted afterwards to watch a pair of chaffinches feeding on some cake crumbs, which I took outside and put down on the patio. I will kick myself for a very long time for failing to grab my phone and film him, as he followed the chaffinches around while pointing at the crumbs and calling, "Birdy, here - tchums!"

After feeding the birds we went to look at some deer they have on the site, one of them a well-antlered buck ("Hawnsh!"), and then walked up the hill towards the Tower itself. At this point we were completely sidetracked by the presence of an old sleigh, painted red and green and decorated with Christmassy greenery, which B insisted on exploring in great depth. In the end R (who's usually prepared to play Bad Cop) decreed that it was time to go home, and though this decision was met with wails of protest, we managed via distraction ("Look at that plane! What colour is it?") and bribery ("Would you like some meaty pasta for dinner?") to coax him back into the car. As we pulled into the yard he seemed genuinely happy and excited to be here, and after some energetic indoor games, the consumption of a small mountain of pasta, a very splashy bath, and the reading of every book we could find with a tractor in it, he settled down cooperatively and went quickly off to sleep.

Which I must now do too, because I could easily be on duty again in a very few short hours. Wish me luck!