It was a glorious afternoon in between the snow flurries.  Nothing settled even though the evening news reported that "the whole country was experiencing challenging weather".  Around 4.30pm my Hero went to close the gate and called for me to come and have a look at something he'd spotted.

Can you see what he wanted to show me?  (yes, of course I grabbed my camera at the time)

These are the trees which were cut back a few weeks ago.  Though the temperatures here have been very low ( -3C when I went swimming at 6.20am this morning) it's been so dry, there's been no frost nor ice.  Yet we can only guess that the cut ends of the branches are still dripping slowly and that moisture is freezing in the cold air.   The icicles are not on the end of every branch, just in one or two places - perhaps just where the branch is pointing downwards?

We stood outside for no more than a minute before running inside again to get warm.  Before we did, however, we looked up when we heard a plane -  it was too cold to fiddle about on the phone and identify it, so we just stood and gazed at the blue sky and dreamed of warm places for a few seconds!

The Beast from the East is scheduled to arrive late today/early tomorrow.  Will I make my 9am dental appointment tomorrow morning, I wonder?