Animal Conversations for Friday

The 'Snow Event' of 2009

The ancient rallying cry of the Scots

"It's not as bad as England"

has always struck me as a typical case of 'shooting low'. In this instance, though, with the great 'Snow Event' of 2009 it's probably pretty accurate. We've had snow but it's not as bad as what got dumped on parts of England over the last 24 hours. The stepson is at school. The chickens are a little miffed but surviving. My wife's ducks have found a muddy bit under the buddleia which is fun to play in (they are muddy from head to toe) and doesn't require trudging through. The dogs were delighted.

I've got a funeral this afternoon and am getting desperate calls from the family wondering if cars can make it up the lane. I think they'll do fine. I estimate we've got between two and three inches on the ground. In other words - nuttin' much at all!

So while I'm sorry that Nick Baines is sitting under ten inches of snow in Croydon and can't get to his meetings today, it's about time that we got a decent winter in the UK. It was four years ago that I got so tired of the boggy, dreary and wet Scottish winter that I took a holiday after Christmas and spent a week in Helsinki just to see some snow.

We've had a good ground frost throughout most of this winter. It'll do wonders for the forest and wonders for my blueberries.

Mind you, it's still coming down thick and fast so you never know.......

The Bus Slogan Generator

Following the recent Atheist bus campaign in the UK with placards reading

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life"

some bright spark has come up with a piece of software - a bus slogan generator - which allows you to design your own quote and plaster it on a London bus.

Burning Heather

They were burning the heather on the Pentland Hills above Penicuik this afternoon. It was really quite majestic and pictures (at least my pictures) don't really capture the colours that were there on the hillside. The hills were more purple and the fire quite a bit cheerier.

Heather gets overgrown and leggy. It ceases to be good cover for wildlife and the lambs get caught in it. Burning patches of heather in this manner encourages new shoots. The burning season ends on the 15th of April so that ground-nesting birds aren't threatened by the activity.