After getting colder than usual here (down to -15C), the weather unexpectedly chucked a bunch of snow down on Monday late afternoon, just as Spouse and his first employee (who had come for his first day of work despite later confessing that around here starting a new job on a Monday was Just Not Done Around Here because it was Bad Luck) were driving back from inspecting the installation they will begin work on in a few days. It was a slip, slip, slippy drive back. The employee headed back home the moment they got back here but already by then the roads between the villages had disappeared under enough snow that the only way he avoided driving off onto the fields was by making sure to keep the triangle on his GPS navigation system in the middle of the road on the screen. But he did make it home and after taking yesterday to recover his nerves/let it all melt/wait for there to be actual work for him to do (the business is in the awkward stage of needing to employ a skilled handiworker to expand but not yet expanded enough to keep a skilled handiworker busy all the time), he was back again today none the worse for wear. And all the snow is already almost gone, turning the landscape back into glum mud in which we found the feathery remains of the grey heron that lived along a little stream we cross on one of our regular walks with the dog, done in by a fox or someone else’s dog or a bird of prey. But for one day, it was a winter wonderland.