Purple hazel catkins

Our purple twisted hazel is developing into a nice little bush.  This year it has quite a few catkins.  It does needs intermittent attention to keep any straight branches pruned out, but I love the effect.

Another bitterly cold day.  It was sunny when I set off down the garden with the camera, but shortly after taking this photo I was driven back inside by another of the intermittent snow/hail showers.  And shortly after that, I took the photo in extras - our sunlit oak tree against the glowering sky.  

In the evening we lit the wood burner, and managed to catch up with Gardener's World, the Friday transmission of which had been a casualty of the Beeb's inexplicably excessive need to show wall to wall coverage of the Duke of Edinburgh on BOTH channels.