Frosty misty morning looking towards Montserrat

I have now got a version of what Woodpeckers has been suffering from for the last week. We do seem to have our own variations which probably reflects the susceptibilities of our own bodies and immune systems. I will be fine in a few days as it is more of a bad cold than flu, but nevertheless it is annoying.

I am spending the day in bed for the first time in ages, and am glad I now have a laptop as well the iMac, so I can be in contact with the small amount of business I have to do. Someone is being featured in Cotswold Life magazine and I have offered them three pictures to accompany the article, as it is about Neighbourhood Development Planning and thus they will feature our Stroud activities. No money yet again but hey, I like to see my pictures in print and getting out to new audiences.

When I got up t make some breakfast this morning the forecast of heavy frost had come true. I pointed my camera out of my study window across the Golden Valley towards Montserrat and Minchinhampton Common. I never get tired of seeing these views as they change day by day. The seasons also strip off the leaves from the trees at the bottom of our garden and reveal a side valley or tributary, called 'The Horns'. The stream that forms it runs directly down behind our house and is called the Lime Brook A little further from our house a second stream runs down from the area called 'The Heavens', and joins the Lime Brook, and together they flow a couple of hundred yards further and enter the much larger River Frome at Bowbridge. There is a small waterfall below 'The Heavens', where the tumbling stream cuts steeply down through a thick layer of softer clay between the strata of Cotswold limestone. I have featured it in several earlier blips. My friend Neil, discovered Roman pottery close to where the stream flattens out across the meadows just below the waterfall; a fabulous site for a home with views into the distance towards the River Severn, or Sabrina, as the Romans named it with the Forest of Dean hills behind.

We are so lucky to have all this within a few hundred yards of our home and to be able to watch it transform month by month. A jay flew into the tree at the bottom of the garden yesterday and preened itself for a few minutes. Last night I was on the patio to take the banana plant in its pot into the cabin, to protect if from the frost, when I heard an owl calling a little further up the Horns valley. Yesterday Helena noticed the grass in the garden had been dug up and I said I thought it would have been the badgers, who come to visit us regularly looking for tasty worms. I must go and check that the bird feeders are topped up, as they will need the extra sustenance in the cold days of winter which seem to now be here..