Muscari 2

I blipped these potted hyacinths a couple of weeks ago. Then I considered putting them in a white vignette, but I didn't get round to it. They didn't need a vignette today. Yesterday they were buried under snow. Large

We had another 2 or 3 cms of snow overnight. The temperature has risen to 3ºC, there has been rain, and now the snow is still deep, but slushy. The novelty is well and truly over. My car is snowed in, and the road has been cleared for vehicles, but not pedestrians. I didn't get more that 20 metres from my gate before I turned back.

Much of my day has been spent watching the birds. This morning, when the cat was sleeping and I was out of the room something bad happened outside. There was blood on the snow under the grain feeder. I inspected the scene. There were no tracks other than bird tracks. Drips of blood continued over virgin snow and then petered out. There were no feathers to be seen. Was there a fight? Did a hawk call in?

The cat has been inside all day. She went out the catdoor at 3.30am and didn't come back, even though I waited up to let her back into the warm kitchen. This morning I found two sets of prints, one going out the catdoor and turning one way, and the other returning from the opposite direction. I followed the tracks for quite a distance. Wherever possible she used my footprints, jumping between them. Otherwise she struck out on her own. She did her rounds, going to the places over a wide area that she likes to check on each day. In some places the snow was too deep and she had to turn back. It was a fascinating insight to cat behaviour.