In spite of all the frost and snow we got in January, the sun was rather strong at times. Strong enough at least to melt quite a lot of the snow on our roof.
It seems the segments of our roof gutter don’t fit that tightly just above the roses. Thus, quite a lot of melt water dripped onto the roses, immediately freezing again in the cold air.
Here’s some impressions.
Without words. 
Each winter when there is frost or snow we use the plum tree as a feeding place for the local birds.
“Local birds” being every two-legged, feathered creature in the vicinity, apparently.
It really wouldn’t surprise me (much) if I were to look out and see an ostrich among the assembly.
Even the crows find something acceptable to eat in the form of the fat & seed balls meant for tits1 which they simply drag up to the branch they’re sitting on, clever buggers…
The pigeons are too big and unwieldy to partake of the feed suspended from the tree and too brainless to do as the crows, but luckily the smaller birds are messy eaters, so they don’t have to go hungry either.
fluffed up pigeons
The deep snow sure made for some funny impressions:
‘duck’ on a pond
Here’s one of the messy eaters:
feeding bird
And if you’d all take a look at the original photo, I have a riddle for you.
Apart from that yellow birdie at the feeding station there is one other bird in the photo. Can you spot it?
Spot bird number two.
Eyes smarting already? Ok, let’s get on with the photos.
Here’s some sorting through the seed mess on the floor.
Note the duck impression the one in the back is giving. 
bird assembly
These two don’t have much going for interspecies relations, stolidly staring off in opposite directions.
Pigeon and magpie: not talking
Two more birdies feeding:
lookout
And for those who need it - the solution to the riddle above:
spot the bird - solution
.
[back]The title says it all - a week after I shot the pictures in the post before the last one I took my poor camera out into the cold again for an encore.
Also, there’ll be a couple more photo posts up shortly - a few being more or less winter related as well.
But back to this one.
For these parts of Germany we had a rather long and harsh winter, especially in terms of the amount of snow that came down. We’re really not used to that kind of thing anymore around here.
Still, it made for the odd freaky picture.
Behold a cold climate relative of the Blob devouring our neighbours’ driveway lamp!!!
View from the side
As seen from the front
Also, bear witness to the amount of snow that poor me had to shovel off the driveway!
It had to go somewhere, so I heaped it up in the more or less empty spots between the larger shrubbery of our front garden.
Way too much snow…
… and running out of depot space.
You should have seen our poor Christmas rose when that snow was finally gone. It did look a wee bit squashed, the poor thing.
In other blog related news, I managed to finish the update to my smiley page.
And, no, Caesar, I am not open for further suggestions; it took me long enough to add these, and this poor old woman needs a rest now. Plus, I don’t even like popcorn.