Water - crystallising

Last night was cold enough to leave about 1 cm of ice on all the water butts. I was considering emptying the lower one so I pulled the ice plate out and threw it away. In the end I couldn't drain it because the hose pipe had also frozen, so I moved onto other jobs. Going by later I saw the ice was reforming and creating some interesting patterns. Hmmm....  not as warm as I thought it was. Here's one of the patterns. You can see the whole surface in the extra.
Those other jobs? We were planting bulbs for the spring. It always seems to be a bit of a race getting the bulbs in before the earth freezes so hard you can't dig it. Today it was close; there was a cm of frozen earth to break through but then it was OK. We got the last of the bulbs in.
There's always firewood to work with and today I sawed the rest of the long logs into short sections, 25 - 30 cm long, ready to be split. The logs are carefully measured now because our new wood-burner needs wood that is maximum 30 cm long, so my basic length is 25 cm. The bits left over at the end of the longer lengths get used for kindling.
Jan was off to bookbinding this evening so we needed to eat dinner at about 4:30. I rushed in to her at 4:50 saying we had to stop now. She looked very puzzled and said it wasn't that late. Then I realised I'd made the classic mistake, my watch was still on summertime!