My dark suspicions were confirmed when I pulled up the bathroom blind this morning to see the ground covered with a thin coating of snow. I couldn't go on clearing the fallen birch out of the wood with snow lying on the ground, because I wouldn't be able to see where I was putting my feet. White snowdrops on a white ground, a subtle effect. When I went to let the chickens into their run and give them their morning treat of porridge oats and a sprinkling of cheap sultanas (which is about as exciting as a chicken's life gets at this time of the year, unless the fox pays another visit which could be exciting but not in a good way) the snow was melting. Excellent, the wretched nuisance would not be with me for too long, but it does make everything outside extraordinarily wet while it's doing it.
It is a definite sign of middle age when you look on snow primarily as a nuisance. In a way, if we had proper snow, say eight inches or a foot, and it was forecast and we'd stocked up on cat food, that wouldn't be so bad. More than a foot and I'd be worried whether the roof could stand the weight. Real thick snow that covers the countryside is very beautiful, and because it is proper snow nobody expects you to be anywhere. But a miserable little dusting of snow, when tussocks of grass poke up through it and you can still see the plough marks in the fields, doesn't look beautiful, it just looks grubby. And those three or four inch falls we sometimes get are annoying, because it hangs on in the countryside long after the heat island effect of London and even Colchester has melted the snow in town, and none of your friends will believe that the last mile of lanes to your house is still a skating rink and the trains are barely functioning. Actually I should hate snow anyway if I were at home and not safely on holiday somewhere, because it is so damaging to the garden, breaking shrubs apart and killing southern hemisphere evergreens like Pittosporum which seem to detest having it stuck to their leaves.
At least yesterday afternoon's mini snow event was in scale with the model railway, and looked very picturesque on the roofs of the prototype model houses that are wintering outside to test the construction method before the Systems Administrator invests too much time and energy building more of them. The latest method of joining the corners is looking promising, according to the SA. One of the houses we visited on holiday originally had a model village which National Trust volunteers have just started to recreate, but the SA spotted the telltale signs of bubbling paint around their bases, showing that the cut edges of the plywood they were built from had not been adequately sealed.
By lunchtime most of the snow had gone, and I spent the afternoon chopping away at some ornamental brambles in the meadow, which have proved so invasive that I have given up thinking I can control them. This time around I aim to extract every last root with a pickaxe, but even then I expect I'll be pulling up odd bits of regrowth for years. If you should ever feel like planting Rubus cockburnianus then don't. Get a friend or relative to confiscate your credit card, and lock yourself in a darkened room until the feeling goes away.
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