Aurora tonight.

Frosty night.   

Goodnight.

Still Freezing.

But it was SUNNY.

Managed the pulmonary physio exercises - a day late - must do better.

Promenade and I did.

Reflections of Tiger Hill in the water on the beach!  Magic.

A closer up.

Gull Gang.  This is at the left of the beach.

More reflections.

Blackheaded Gulls.

Someone approaches so they all fly.

Stonechat.  Always thrilled to capture one of these as they are so quick.

I met Bella.  Isn't she lovely!

Back home and to reality.  Time to sort and tidy.  It has to be done.

One tea trolley done bottom and top shelf.

Second tea trolley top and bottom shelves done.  Which just leaves....

Work table.

And display table.  

Enough.

Watched the ice form on the birds water.

Through a mucky window the sun setting.  That is ice not snow.

Still freezing.

Wednesday witterings.

SO COLD.  

Frost covering everywhere.  

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone.  So true.....

Even on the Prom.

Ice every where you look.

Well, not quite everywhere.  Mainly Skurries in the Kessock Burn.

Fairly bubbling along and carving again...

Bit of a mixture of birds on the left of the beach.  

Lobster boats returning to the Harbour.

Look at all those Lobster Pots!  (Trunks - Doric).

Doing the turn to Starboard to line up with the Harbour entrance.

Home and to the Shedudio.  Wednesday is the day of the visit from my friend and fellow artist.  Now on with a painting of Elephants.  I dont paint when she comes just yak!  So what with yesterday's jaunt and today's yakking I am tired again!

Hey ho.

Here is a photo of Sith Cat being soppy.

His favourite place is over a shoulder.  His purrs shake the walls.  You have to be stood up.  He does not do this if you are sitting down.  Cats!

The sun will shine again tomorrow, as it did today, but it will still be cold.  I can cope with that.  No wind. Ha.

Lunch.

Our lovely friends have recently taken over The Lodge Cafe at Strichen Park.  They run the cafe and Golf range and shop in Fraserburgh, The Dunes.

Dunes Cafe.

Which is very, very successful.

A lot more snow, inland from us, at Strichen Community Park.

We were invited to partake of lunch as a training exercise for the new staff.

Our table number and menu.  Plus out of shot a specials menu.

Moi.

My lunch.  Bacon and Brie toastie on brown.  With a lot of trimmings. Which sadly I could not manage.  I have now been told that I have to ask for a small portion I then get half a toastie.  I also have to specify NO SIDES.  At the Dunes it is known as a Jills special!  But there is no tablet effort there!

The DP had already demolished his 3 Fish cakes with dips and chips and salad.....

Everything went well, the staff were confident, helpful, smiley and efficient.  What more can one say.  All orders were ditted in to a tablet thing.  Which then went to the chef ( my mate Colin).

There were other people there.  For me this was way out of my comfort zone being with people in a time when I am supposed to be avoiding people until Spring!  They had the invites staggered so other people arrived in half hour blocks.  And none of us had to pay.  So nobody gave the staff an order for pudding!

The Lodge.

A lot of the guests brought bouquets of flowers.  Me - I brought this white framed painting I did of the Swans on the frozen Strichen Lake.  Torvill and Dean!  

We left and went on to the Prom.  8 miles from Strichen to Fraserburgh.

Before going home.  I am shattered.  Happily shattered.

Snow!

Woke up to blizzards!  Not expecting that.  Had had the bedroom window open as we always do unless its very windy.  Once under the duvet warm and cosy.  As someone with lung problems I am not supposed to be exposed to fresh air at night but sod it, I much prefer it.

The snow ceased and where the sun shone, which it did, soon disappeared.

My jaunt to the Prom after lunch had the sun gone for a while.  Very cold.  Not many people walking.  And no Gull Gang or Oystercatchers or anything much apart from

Four Skurries (Herring Gulls)  having a drink from the Kessock Burn.

A deserted beach.

Snow on Mormond Hill.  Mormond Hill is our biggest hill in this area and can be seen from most places, our house, the road back to our house and Fraserburgh and Strichen as that is where it is.  It is quite an interesting hill.  This view is on my way home from the Prom.

On our side of the hill is the stag.  Made of lumps of quartz it is regularly sorted by volunteers who weed the lumps of vegetable growth in between the lumps. To clear and make visible the stag again.

On the other side of the hill is a horse.  There is a story about that - later.

Mormond Hill was home to Station 44 of the US North Atlantic Radio System (NARS) serving as an early warning radar system between 1961 and 1992. The NARS system was intended to warn of missile launches. The station was built in 1960, as the penultimate link in a chain of radio sites reaching from Iceland to Fylingdales in Yorkshire, which would transmit that information to the Cheyenne Mountain complex in the USA. Mormond Hill provided connectivity from the radar site at RAF Buchan to Fylingdales. NARS used tropospheric scatter to provide its communications links, however this method proved less than ideal as data rates increased over time, being replaced by more reliable satellite based systems. The USAF left Mormond Hill in 1992, and the site transferred to the MoD in 1993. 

It is still used by the MoD who often object to windfarms interfering with their masts reception of goodness knows what.

We can just see Mormond Hill from the Shedudio.

Card production.  And some painting.

Short Eared Owl with some salt up the fence post.  Hopefully make it look like wood.

Hmm.

On the way back up from the Shedudio noticed the magnificent Hellebore.  A cheapo from Lidl last year it has spread and we have white flowers and the lime green ones.  Nothing else is flowering.

And a bit of snow...!

Jean.  The bird count for the Garden Bird Watch.  The rules are quite specific.  You count the birds you see. But you count the numbers of each bird as the number you see at once.  So sit for an hour you see 1 Blackbird.  Then you see 3 together.  So 3 is entered.  You see 5 Blue tits at once so 5 is entered.  I had 6 Goldfinches, but then more came until I had a total of 16 in front of me so 16 was entered.  So no you do not count each bird as it comes in, it is the biggest number of a particular species that you see all together.  Hope that clarifies it for you, so when you see the final results you can believe it.

I have a lunch date tomorrow.  Exciting.  All will be revealed!