glass ceiling!

You may see the ice better in large.

It was very. very cold last night and at one time the temperature on my roof, where I have solar (ha ha ) panels and a gauge, measured -8'. This morning I crept outside in dressing gown and slippers to check what frost damage there had been in the garden. A couple of hopeful primula flowers were looking very frosted and dejected and the buds on the Camellia bush were showing the cold too and probably regretting their decision to start swelling in anticipation of an early spring. I hope they are still sufficiently protected by the bud casing as I had no flowers on the bush at all last year. Thankfully no bulbs have yet even dared to form buds so they should be fine as long as they don't move!

I then glanced down at the pond where I have about ten goldfish and noticed that the ice had started to form across the top. I do have a big round polystyrene donought shaped object which I always keep on the pond during the winter. Its inner circle is supposed to remain ice free while all about can form quite thick ice; this way the goldfish retain an air hole so that gases can escape and they do not suffocate. During one of the last severe winters this simply did not work as the temperature plummeted to such depths that even the air hole froze, no matter how hard I tried to keep it open using boiling water. That year I lost both fish and frogs, which was very hard! Anyway I thought I would post this blip to show that some of my fish are hanging in there just below the surface ice.

Hopefully having blipped early, I will be able to concentrate on other projects today once I have walked the dogs who are now anxious to be on the go. Hope your are all keeping warm somehow.

Back from the walk and I don't think it will go above zero today. Up on the hill there was a frozen cloud inversion but it wouldn't capture effectively on camera as everything above the cloud was also white from the frost - so there were no lost blip opportunities there :-)