Cold snap in February

We had a week of snow and frost between 7th and 12th of February.  At night the temperature sunk to minus 2 or 3 degrees and on several days the thermometer scarcely rose above zero.  From my window I could see snow slowly turning into patches, but the most distinctive feature was an icicle slowly growing from a black plastic drainpipe


This aggregation of things starts on the right hand side with the plank walls of a large shed in the garden. Moving leftwards, or northwards, is the black pipe with the icicle oozing from it.  The wooden branches are part of a European fly honeysuckle bush I grew from seed I found in 1984 in the forest near Lac Johnson in Quebec.  Behind this the snow lies thick on an old, recycled rubber dustbin lid used to cover the green plastic water butt (rather inefficiently).  The icicled pipe, which drains water from the shed gutter, should have gone into this but its last section seems to have been lost.

Other vegetation in the picture includes ivy climbing the corner of the shed, an out of focus cotoneaster in the background between the shed and the fly honeysuckle and, in the top left hand corner, the southern end of a hedge of Wilson's honeysuckle, Lonicera ligustrina yunnanensis 'Baggesen's Gold'.


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