Snow-Capped Fungus.

Spent a long morning in Haddington at a workshop for Leader funding to develop our beekeeping project at Newbattle Abbey. It's an exciting time if you're excited by such things, we're planning to start a bee breeding programme as, whilst there are many people wanting to start keeping bees at present, there is a dearth of bees for them to keep. This all takes a lot of equipment even though we're not planning to move into artificial insemination (you think I'm joking? Follow this link to the late great Dave Cushman's web site), and the cottage we are using at the abbey is in need of a little renovation.

One of the problems with bees at the moment is that it's too easy to import them from - well -just about anywhere; like old age, bees don't come alone - they bring exotic pests and diseases with them; it's similar to the problem with ash die-back but with one big exception: while our dearly beloved government saw fit to ban the import of ash trees within a few years of the disease arriving in Britain, we're still waiting for the import of bees to be banned more than 20 years after the bee mite varroa arrived.

The afternoon was dog walking time with Merlin, the rather strange corgi in our charge, and the lovely Meg. After a morning of continuous snow, the sun was shining out of a blue sky and we saw a merganser flying past, normally only see them riding the rapids; I took loads of pictures (well several, Mrs TD is always telling me not to exaggerate), but my blip for the day is this little clump of fungi six feet off the ground with its dinky little cap of snow. I could have knitted a cap and blipped the finished article but I was lazy and let Mother Nature do the hard work.