The last snow...

...in the garden. There is a tiny patch of snow in the centre of the picture. This is all that remains of the 4 metre high pile left by the clearing of our drive.
In the foreground is the helebore we planted a couple of years ago. It seems very well established there, getting bigger each year and with more blooms every spring.
The blue sky has been with us all day though it's cold at night (presently -1°C) and the northerly wind is very chilling. However, it is still lovely to see the sun! The wind is dry and we washed our bedding this morning, hung it out to dry, and by the afternoon it was bone-dry and we could put it back on the bed
We spent the entire day, a long one, in the garden. It got later and later but there was always just one more job to do. The end of the time outside was burning all the dry vegetation Jan had raked up. I took some of the burning grass and dropped it onto the slope between the drive and the lower lawn. As I hoped the dry grass there started to burn and we could carefully spread the fire all along the slope., burning off the dead vegetation from several years. Just now it looks very black and sooty but rain is coming and I think it will green over very rapidly. After all that burning it was in to shower away the smoky smells.
The wood frame in the cellar is almost full with the dry wood I logged and split today. It's a tree we took three years ago and cut into longer logs that were stored in the kayak tent. That's a couple of weeks of fires in our log burner next winter.
All this garden work has left us both very tired and a bit stiff. But tomorrow may be a rest day with it's forecast of rain and mist.
Soon we'll be headed off to bed. It feels very satisfying to be taking our tired and clean selves up to the wind-dried fresh bedding! I'm sure we'll both sleep well tonight!