Thaw

What a difference  a few days and a temperature increase can make. Since yesterday morning  the temperature has gradually risen and by this morning had reached a balmy 8.5c. The Line is now merely flecked with patches of ice and snow, as are the fields towards Memsie and Rathen, Mormond Hill remains a monochrome.The fields by the Line, which were under a gleaming white blanket on Tuesday, are now under water. The meltwater from the snow has flooded the fields and filled the ditches alongside the line with icy water. The floods make one more aware of the contours of the land, not as level as it seems.  The ditches are overflowing with mushroom coloured water on which sheets of ice float, the Water of Philorth running fast and high. How easily one could slip down the embankment and quietly drown. The ducks in their pond at Craigewan were standing huffily on a sheet of floating ice. There were geese, gulls and mallards in the floods, starlings, curlews and corvids feeding in the softened fields.Our walk was cut short at Craigewan by the depth of water (with miniature icebergs) in the dip where the road crosses the Line, a digger was trying to clear the drain as we turned back.