Morning snow

The weather has turned bitterly cold with a huge anticyclone (known as the Beast from the East) heading in across mainland Europe from Siberia.

There was an appreciable amount of snow this morning and I ventured out to see what it had done to the Square Metre.  Interestingly, unlike the rest of the garden, it was almost snow free, I think because it lies on the southern side of a hedge and can catch any sunlight that is going.  This gives it an appreciably warmer microclimate that elsewhere in the neighbourhood.  Note that the area beyond the hedge and on its north side has an unbroken snowfield.

It is in weather like this that the self sown holly just to the right of the birch tree comes into its own.

Return of the thrush?

The broken shell below is of a brown-lipped snail, Cepaea nemoralis.  It is resting on the Lyon Stone on the western side of M3 and it looks very much as though it was battered open by a thrush using the stone as an anvil.  In 2004 a thrush was very active in the area using a different piece of stone as an anvil but they do not seem to have been common in recent years.

I have written about the stone elsewhere.  It came from the river Lyon in Glen Lyon, Scotland and was given to me for no obvious reason and without explanation by an acquaintance who had just returned therefrom.  There is all sorts of magic and mystery about these stones and I rather treasure it.  Much about the stones of Glen Lyon here http://philipcoppens.com/glenlyon.html