The earth was hard as iron ...

A's birthday today and unfortunately due to the season and weather only the cover of her present has arrived and not the Kindle to go inside it. So the present came with an apology and a promise of more to come.

We'd invited S to join us for a walk and birthday lunch at Wentworth Castle Gardens (about two and a half miles from home) and the day, though icy cold, was much better than promised and our walk was very enjoyable. I can't remember the ground being quite this frozen since here I've lived (approx 13 years). A good day for photographs and I took lots - I'll probably add a few of them to my Flickr page later. For afternoon tea we enjoyed a rather fine cake that S brought from the patisserie in Harrogate and we still have some left for later. Harrogate being Harrogate, has these things!

There are now deer in the grounds of Wentworth Castle grounds (actually the castle is a folly and we know it as Northern College, an adult education college). These fallow deer were resting under a tree when we entered the grounds from the public footpath. There are lots of red deer in the grounds too which all belong to the deer farm on Round Green Road. Feeding time was at one pm and they all emerged from far and wide, only to hurry back to the distant reaches of the park when the food was gone. Watching them made me think of the reindeer paintings of Sami herding their flocks that S brought back after her sabbatical at a college in northern Sweden.

Soon I'll need to start thinking about cooking our evening meal - I think we'll open that special bottle of wine that was a thank you present from neighbours for printing off some photographs of their very, very fine old car that M had just finished restoring.