the fence is steaming

The sky was clear this morning, but the pond didn't look frozen, so I was surprised to find the grass crunching under my feet and the greenhouse frozen shut. In spite of the sun the thermometer says it's -2C, and the fence, which faces east is steaming gently. There was a flight of geese overhead - I wish I could identify them from their calls as the experts do, but I can't -and the sparrow colony is moving in to pick up the seed that the blue-tits and coal tits scatter from the feeder.
Inside the house things are slow. Everybody but me seems to be just a bit below par and out of sorts, but we are still making progress with sorting out that mountains of junk we have accumulated over the past year. The makeover season seems to have started in the village and there are two lots of tradesmen parked outside the house (nothing to do with us, though).
Meantime I have no less than sixteen poems under construction, and I'm going back for another one I have finished three times now, but still needs something - thoughts about bitterns, probably. Naomi's godmother told me once that when she came to the village in the sixties there were bitterns in the reed-beds. Not any more there aren't.
Also Recusant got a hell of a shove just before Christmas. It's going to be a very interesting thing to do. It's going to focus on time, and have about six different layers. I'm glad about this. Front row had an item about two novelists who have just produced novels about archaeologists, so I was definitely needing a different look!