It is so very cold and lifeless at the allotments at present. All the creatures are sheltering in the undergrowth, and the only signs of plant life are from the shallots and red onions as they slowly push green tufts through the soil,
I worry about the birds this time of year. They've been around millions of years in one form or another, and must know all about surviving cold, but they do look so small and vulnerable, and their little bodies surely need more protection than their feathers provide.
Today I left some wild bird seed for them, some of it in the form of a heart to encourage them. I hope the small birds manage to get a good share before the rodents and pigeons polish it off.
It was cold but it was also beautiful today. Everywhere was decorated with frost, and ordinary things had been transformed into magical versions of their normal forms.
The ice was around three inches thick in the baths. I tried to break it so the birds had water to drink, but I just created frosty stars full of rainbow prisms on the surface instead.
As I turned out of my gate I heard a strange plopping sound that seemed to be coming out of the ground, but I think it was water trapped under the ice somewhere. It conjured in my head an image of a medieval style hybrid creature - half pig and half frog. I could imagine how people in medieval times thought up those creatures in response to the curious things they encountered in nature. I can understand how it was a way of connecting to those things. I don't think it was necessarily an attempt to explain or control them, more a pure description of an experience. I'll try to draw the pigfrog and see if I get even more of a sense of the medieval perspective on nature.
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