Muddy waters

It was a 'hot' day today, 12 dgr.C. in the shade, but still some ice on little manmade forestlakes. Most paths are fine but we walked mostly horsetracks and they were really muddy. Atilla chased a rabbit and now he's got a sore back again.
We even saw a butterfly today, mostly black with red stains.

Windmills

Not these windmills. These are friendly in comparison and perhaps 20% the size of modern windturbines. Modern turbines are used in Scotland for filling up the vast, empty spaces in the Highlands of Scotland. It's just an empty landscape, innit ? Let's fill it up with turbines and fill the wallets of landowners, politicians and big energycompanies at the same time. Where the Romans didn't succeed, the Turbines will.

However, opposition is growing.  You can read all about it at Alan Sloman's site with opinions and links to other sites.

Don't tell anyone....

that I've turned 50 today. Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhh !!

Siberia

It looked like it in our local neck of the wood but the temperature proved otherwise (+3).

After a fresh dusting of snow last night the weather had clearly changed. On 'the day after' only my eldest son, Gillean, was up for a daunder with me and the dog this morning. After leaving the carpark we started looking for, and following, shoeprints in the now soft snow. We gave them names like Plus1, Plus2, V, Wave or Square, after the prints the owners of the shoes left in the snow. Prints of small deer, squirrel and rabbit were seen also.

After half an hour or so we decided to go cross country. We enjoyed ourselves ploughing through the snow. Virgin country was crossed and the going was slow. We pretended to be in prehistoric Siberia looking for food for survival and being aware of predators like wolves that could hunt us down. We regularly stopped to listen to the sounds of the forest and the melting snow falling from the top of the trees might, in our imagination, have been caused by dangerous animals who would certainly eat us alive if we were foolish enough to get caught.    

Thanks to our excellent survival skills we managed to get out of the forest alive. We could hear the wolfs howl in the deep, dark forest. It was a narrow escape.

Cold

-12 C. last night. According to a weatherexpert december has been 'unstable' and he predicts januari will see a longer period of subzero temperatures.
In a few moments I'm off to hibernate, ehhhh.....to work.

I remember the old days when we had 1 cm of snow for 1 week in November, a lot of rain in winter and some snow in March. I also remember the good old days with snow upto your dangling bits. Yes, they were much closer to earth as I was just a little boy in those days but a 40cm snowcover was no exception.

You woke up one morning and you had this strange feeling that something was wrong. Or better said : something had changed during the night. What could it be ? Yes, the sound ! No sound !! And then you heard those creaking footsteps and a shovel scratching the pavement. SNOOOOWW !!! You ran down the stairs, your mother shouted 'breakfast' but who needed breakfast ? Breakfast is for southern softies.

You played outside all day, having snowball fights, rolling up a huge snowball to build a snowman and even building iglos.

winterview from the attick

Those winters seem to have returned. A good snowcover although not as high as in some parts of Holland but enough to have great fun with. What did I miss this morning ? The silence was there, I could clearly hear it. What was missing then ? It was that other sound, the sound of children playing. Where were they ?
Were they inside like my own kids ? Yesterday I had to force them out of the house. "Go outside and play. Have snowballfights, build something with snow!" "But what should we build with snow, papa ?" Aaaaaaarghh. My mistake. "Start your Wii and make funny moves with your arms in the livingroom, the one with the highest score gets a hot chocolate". I wonder if my digital image will get cold in this virtual world  of snow.

Winter returns

Winter returned today with a vegeance. We drove Cameron to school for his last schoolday of 2010 and my wife Katinka, my daughter Kayla, our dog Atilla and I went for a walk. We were just in time for sunrise and we saw some stunning skies. I hope the pictures do justice to the beauty of this morning.

As soon as the sun appeared above the horizon these incredible colours returned to normal. Clouds were moving in and we could see more snow coming from the northwest. There wasn't much wind and the temperature was close to zero degrees Celsius. The walking was pleasant. 

After an hour and fifteen minutes we returned to the car and drove home. It didn't stop snowing until about 4 p.m.. The snowcover is 10-20cm thick and traffic has come to an halt in The Netherlands.
More snow is forecasted for tonight.