I wasn’t expecting to be met this morning by such a hard frost from last night.  It was spectacular.  The world was white and crunchy.

The Shetland ponies were covered in frost and it best showed up on the darker ones.

Waffle

Newt

Albie’s tail – top

I took the ice out of the large water bucket by stamping on it, picking out the pieces by hand (cold much and possibly a stupid idea without gloves) and noted that the ice was at least 1 cm thick.

No one was feeling the cold. The ponies were all happy shovelling their daily breakfast in while I blew on my fingers trying to regain feeling.

The native ponies’ coats were doing exactly what they are designed to do – to provide efficient insulation and protection. They have a “double coat” which works very well, especially this time of year.

It had been a clear night – hence the hard frost.

I think it will freeze again tonight and also there has been:-

“A recent solar explosion that almost reached “X-class” status has hurled a massive coronal mass ejection toward Earth, which will likely hit our planet and trigger a geomagnetic storm on Dec. 1.” –  Live Science.

So, there might be some impressive “merrie dancers” (northern lights) tonight.  I shall pop outside the back door occasionally this evening to look, but I’m not staying long out there – not in these temperatures.  Blimmin’ cold, I tell ye.

If you want to watch too – go here – https://www.shetlandwebcams.com/cliff-cam-3/. You get to stay warm!

The ducks, having learned to fly, are practising height now.

Today I found these three youngsters on top of one of the containers.  Two girls and one boy.

They are all huge characters.  Watching the politics and hierarchy is interesting. The girls are not shy in telling the boys what they think of them.

This is the face of a boy duck who has been told off by a girl duck, possibly his sister.

You know she is the boss.

I did hear OH tell someone that we had “far too many ducks these days”, so I ignored that comment because I can’t imagine getting rid of any but spring-time might be a different matter.

We’ll see.  At the moment, things are fairly peaceful on the duck front and they are a cheery bunch, very enthusiastic about food with fairly good manners to me and each other.

A brief glimpse at the sun this morning and it was a busy day ahead.

The plumber was here for most of the morning trying to resurrect our boiler (only 24 years old) to limp through another winter, while we are on the list to have a new one installed in spring.

While the plumber (who Ted adored and did all his party tricks for) was leaving, my fencing contractor, Morgan, arrived and we walked the boundaries so I could show him where I wanted my two tracks for the Minions to live on in the Spring/Summer/Autumn months.  I took the dogs, telling them that this was their dog walk for the day.

We started off when there was the most god-awful yowling and we turned to see Monster shouting at us to wait.

I asked Morgan whether he had ever been on a dogwalk with a cat and he admitted that this was a first for him.

Stopping to wait for Monster to catch up, we used the time to discuss where and what I wanted.  Morgan is just putting in the fence stabs (posts) and I will attach electric fence to make it both permanent but changeable if required.

The stream will run through two points of the track so no one will have to lug water either.  While we were talking about how much we hated the lugging food and water in winter, everyone else stopped to hunt for a bit.

Then it was time for my fencing contractor to leave and we all escorted him to his pickup and trailer.

Now to make a million sheeple to contribute towards this…….

We were out early as OH and I were spending the day in town.  All the animals were fed, the dogs walked and sheep in their field.

Town was surprisingly busy and very, very cold. There was a bitter north-east wind that seemed to turn according to whatever direction we were walking in. It was always blowing in our face.  Minus 3 apparently.  It felt colder but I was wearing clean clothes so perhaps my usual dirt wasn’t there to keep me warm.

A nice lunch with friends in an “interesting” restaurant but the company was excellent which is all that really matters.  An exchange of early Christmas presents and OH and I drove home before it got dark.

This is the view from where I stopped the car to get more petrol.  Not bad, eh?

While OH unpacked the car, I looked after the ducks – and certainly not the sheep who need nothing but came along optimistically.

There was even flying, which is no mean feat if you are large Muscovy duck built like a Lancaster Bomber.

While I fed the ducky-wuckes, Pepper entertained the sheep.  ‘Ster was particuarly receptive.

And Pepper has a thing about sheep lugs – which presumably tickle for the owner while she investigates.

There was no butting, just Lambie looking slightly gormless on the side-lines!

These days I am about as popular as a 💩 in a swimming pool, as the saying goes.

Now the storm has moved on, I moved everyone back to their old fields.

To be fair, everyone cooperated beautifully and then proceeded to stand there and sulk at me.  I was very sulked at. There was no escape.

I even moved the little ones as I could see them getting visibly fatter and fatter while I watched.  So, shutting all escape routes first, and leading Waffle and Vitamin, the others meakly followed thinking there were going somewhere exciting – they are not very bright.

You almost see the lightbulb ping when they realised where they were again.  The sigh of disappointment.

And they all stood there asking me why I had done this.  I explained my visible fat theory while incorporating the phrase “it is for your own good”. I don’t think anyone believed me.

So I have the spent the rest of the day hiding in my shed, trying to avoid any accusatory glares.

Wherever I go, the eyes, the eyes, they follow me.

Everywhere.  24 hours on and I am still being sulked at.