Humans are not very well adapted to snow. I envy the coots - their great galoshes of feet enable them to skip lightly over the drifts that have swallowed up our road. I, on the other hand am forced to plough on, the snow coming up to my knees.
The adverts for creme eggs are the only thing to suggest spring is here. Is it here? Where are the daffodils, the daisies, the buttercups, the violets, the primroses, the nesting birds, the frogs, or the sun? Winter’s icy grip has hung on to Easter, with its worst snow falling in March. Snowdrops and crocuses seem to cryogenically frozen in time, and the shoots of hawthorn in the hedgerow or apple blossom in the orchards are nowhere to be found.
A jay breaks from the wood opposite our house, its grating call echoing off the metre high snowdrifts butressing the hedge. A mixed flock of finches have been disturbed and scatter to the pine plantation. The stream in the verge is still flowing and is visited by a song thrush, but even he can’t stand the easterly wind for long and flies to a more secluded spot. In Bourton churchyard a mighty yew has been split asunder, centuries of growth shattered by the weight of snow. The wind picks up again, the drifts are moved like dunes in a desert, and the snow continues to fall.
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