A New Decade, 1st January 2010. Icy Photos.

Will this cold weather never end? We have been threatened with minus 10 tonight!! That's unheard of. Fingers crossed that the water doesn't freeze this time.

Jim and I ate ourselves into the New Year! We had my favourite meal, egg and chips!! Plus dips first and mince pies and cream for dessert. We then did a jigsaw puzzle of a butterfly. It was one of those with lots of colours the same and we finally finished it about 5am! How daft are we?

Looking back to Christmas and Buster's present, this is what happened to his rugby ball:

The insides! The sad looking doll on the mat is Emily, who Buster has had since he was a puppy - she has no insides either!


There's a touch of irony about the badge on the ball don't you think??

Yesterday I also managed to get out into the garden for a while. Not too long as it was very cold. I tidied here and there and even did some willow pruning. Jim took this rather unflattering shot of me!


It was amazingly windy the night before and the wind had brought down a very attractive willow tree which is next to our tool shed. Jim's going to take some cuttings from it.

Jim rather foolishly let Buster on his lap (well, as much of him as would fit) the same evening and he drove us nuts yesterday evening trying to get back up on the settee (which he isn't supposed to do).


How have we managed to create such a daft dog?

Today we got up late of course and as it was sunny, took Buster for a walk to the lake. It was very cold and we wrapped up warm. As my camera has broken, I used Jim's but it's rather like driving another car, it doesn't feel quite the same. I'll have to get used to it though. Here are a selection of photos.

The sun had melted some of the frost but you can see the crystals on the oak leaves in the foreground.

There was some thick ice around, luckily not too much on the road. I loved the ice that had formed at the edge of Kevin's field.



We met a couple who had walked down from their house up near the main road. They were lovely and we had a long chat. They had wonderful faces and I asked if I could photograph them:

This is Terry (originally from the UK)

And this is Clare. Isn't she lovely? Now we know where they live, we will go and call on them.

They had 2 dogs with them, a little terrier and a very large almost white Labrador. Buster had a wonderful romp with them, especially the lab, who it turned out wasn't theirs, but they walked him for a neighbour. It's good to meet new people.

Jim and I continued to the lake side. The lake was much more frozen than it had been on my last visit and some of the patterns of the ice were amazing. Here are two of the shots I took:#


The lines of ice look like the contours I used to draw on a map for geography at school.


Kevin's yard was very icy but there was a path we could tread that was dry. Here is the icy stream running down:


It was strange, you could see the water underneath this ice running down the slope!

Buster walked out onto the fishing stand and we were worried he might try and walk on the ice and fall in. He came back when we called him luckily.


Lough Graney with a pink tinge and tree reflections.


Jim all wrapped up against the cold.

On the walk back, Jim and I were pretty cold - both our hands and feet had frozen and as soon as the sun went down the temperature dropped dramatically, so we rushed home to our lovely warm fire.

Jim made a lovely curry (turkey, would you believe), and we watched the last episode of the wonderful David Tennant as Doctor Who. He died in this episode, which was rather sad and a new Doctor appeared. David Tennant is a very hard act to follow.

That's enough for today. I am hoping to be able to get some good photographs tomorrow if the frost is as hard as they say it will be.

Happy New Year Everyone.