January the 12th.

January has brought a mixed bag of weather. Days of wild winds and relentless rain with occasional days of flat calm and sunshine, but mostly days of snow and frost. New year’s day itself dawned grey and wet, the view from the garden akin to a half finished watercolour, the bones were there but the colours were missing, shades of grey instead of greens and blues. A Sparrowhawk arrived mid morning, resting for half an hour on a nearby fence post, wet and slightly bedraggled but ever alert.

The days following New Year brought better weather, a couple of  fleece and Tee shirt days. A temporary wind break, put up to shield solar panels and their yet to grow screen of young Willow from the worst of the Westerlies, had come a poor second to a pre New Year 90mph gale. While the sun shone, windbreak Mk2 went up, longer stabs, driven deeper into the ground. Despite the loud rhythmic clanging of the post driver, a Robin spent the day with us. Checking the ground around our feet for goodies, and perhaps giving marks out of 10 for fence straightness and height.

We finished the fence just in time. The following day brought Northerlies, horizontal hail and bitter cold, when the winds eased, the hail turned to snow. Each shower brought no more than a dusting, never settling to any great depth, just enough to give a cold beauty to the land.

Each night brought a frost, not the -16’s and below that central Scotland has suffered but enough to make gravel crunchy and stone steps lethal. The wildlife ponds, dug a couple of years ago at the bottom of the meadow, freezing each night and thawing each day.

The cold snap has brought more birds to the garden. Finches cluster on feeders like Ants on an unlucky Caterpillar. Shyer birds have also been seen, a pair of Reed buntings, who in Spring will nest in a briar filled boundary ditch, have arrived most days. Below the feeders, Wood mice are enjoying a cold weather bounty, feeding on husks and dropped seed.

Although the garden won’t really wake from its slumber for some months,  there’s still old and new life to be seen. At this time of year, Lichens are noticed, brittle clusters of soft grey-green that have a growth rate of a millimetre or so per year. We’ve noticed that they are already starting to form on trees planted only a few years ago, those on the trees we inherited must be many decades old. A forest in miniature.

There’s younger life as well. In a sheltered spot, a perennial Poppy, planted in late Summer, is already pushing up through the earth. Bright green against last years fallen Alder leaves.

Clear frosty nights brought faint views of the Mirrie Dancers together with crystal clear views of the night sky and the Milky way. One evening, at close to midnight, I took a couple of frames, one from the edge of the garden, another from a spot where garden ends and moor begins. The silence was deafening, only broken by the click of the shutter or the occasional murmuring of Greylag geese roosting out on the water of the bay.

The weather has changed today, northerlies replaced by south-westerlies. At sunrise I walked down to the shore and took the photograph below. The grass was crunchy underfoot, white from an overnight frost, but the bite had gone from the air. Next week will bring warmth and a thaw. As I crunched down to the shore a small bob of ever inquisitive Harbour Seals appeared, homing in on the human, to see what he was up to.