I had to drag myself out of the house this morning. Inside was so warm and cosy, outside was so cold and hostile. So I thought anyway. Minus fifteen degrees ( +5 F) and sunny, no wind at all though. But I have to say it was really wonderful outside at the morningwalk. I wanted to take the way down to the creek, so I checked that there were no hunters in the woods today. But walked by the fields at first.

This was the only picture I got that showes a little of the sparklig in the trees and grass. It´s so beautiful "in the real" so to speak.

The grass is thick with icekristalls.

The trees and grass sparkled as covered with diamonds and it sounded like we crushed the grass when we walked on it. Not a sound could be heard exept for the chirp from small birds. My dogs ran around like maniacs following the tracks from wild animals or just enjoying the cold air. When we came down to the creek we followed it into the woods.

Even though it´s so cold there´s still some open spaces in the creek.

There´s still open water in the creek, but that´s only because the waterlevel has sunken. The icelayer is almost twenty centmeters (eight inches) over the waterlevel. The water in the ground has frozen so there´s not enough water to fill up to the icelayer anymoore.

Here You can see that the waterlevel has sunken much due to the water freezing in the ground.

When we have followed the creek for a while we go up on a road walking homewards. Suddenly I see something that hasen´t been there befor. Something green, but what it is I can´t see. I look at it for a long time not able to say wat it is. So i call for my dogs and two of them comes immediately, but old Erna can´t heare me of course. I tried to shout to her once without any result :-) But then she turns towards me and my signlanguage makes her understand what I want her to do. I´m glad that I always used signs when I learned them what to do.

This is the last place the creek will freeze at. There´s a tiny tiny waterfall here and it takes a lot of cold days to freeze that.

The fur on Hector is also frozen now. Usually he´s not white all the way up to his chin. But he loves this cold weather.

Then I suddenly hear a huntingdog and the thing I saw started to move. It´s a hunter! He must have come after I checked if there were any hunters out today. Standing still he was mor or less invisible to me. I turned and walked back the same way I came, but I´m pretty sure that I spoiled his day. He left just after I came home. Well well, that means that the deers will make it one day more :-)
Be good!

The footprint from one of my cats waiting for us to come back from the walk.