Snow!

Sunday was a garden marathon, after Mr A complained on Saturday that I spend all my time doing homework and we never do anything together. So we got to work on the garden, first moving a shrub that was in the wrong place, then I did a lot of clearing away dead leaves and overgrown bushes while he worked on fixing the trellis that the rose pulled over last summer when it had more flowers than the trellis could hold up. I finished all my pruning, went indoors to make some lentil salad for lunch next week, it started to snow very lightly, I went up to the shop to get some milk, and Mr A was still working on the trellis. He finished at about 5 p.m. Maybe we should revert to how we used to do less together... I had a badminton match after all that, while he soaked his tired muscles in a lovely bath.


And today, the snow continued. Not very much in Leamington, nor on the journey to Nottingham. But once I got there, it snowed pretty steadily all day. Beautiful, but potentially deadly. They cancelled two lectures, which gave me some time to do some research into the paper I'm going to present as a magazine article. By the time I was ready to go home, most of the roads that were icy in the morning had been gritted, and there wasn't a problem, even on the highest bit of the M1 where the outside lane was pretty much out of bounds with slush. There's not much snow here this morning, although I don't know about Nottingham. I shall set off anyway, with a thermos and a sleeping bag in the car just in case. 

I'm hoping to have time to take some photos today - I think snow is so beautiful, and the couple of pictures I hurriedly took yesterday aren't worth posting here. Look at this instead. I am finding, however, that the joy of snow is muted with age - instead of rushing out to build a snowman I shrink from frozen fingers and worry about falling over and breaking something. We do hope that it will last until the weekend, though, so we can use the toboggan again.

Working in the garden seemed to do some good; Mr A seemed almost cheerful on Sunday evening but he was back to normal yesterday. He's due to speak to the doc tonight, and with luck he may remember to ask which liver enzyme is raised and what the causes and consequences might be. I am starting to wonder whether it is simply the effect of 12 months of continuous stress, because I'm not sure he (or I) can take it for much longer. We have decided that if we don't see some improvement in the finances of the business by May, we shall have to Take Steps.