Frost

This morning we had the first frost of the winter. Quite strong on the extension roof, present on the back lawn.  A couple of hours later now largely gone from the lawn but still present on the roof.

The three micro-ponds are just about visible to the left of the garden bench.

The hump front is the top of a polished ball of some kind of striped stone, bought quite a few years ago now from the small mineral shop which used to occupy the main room in the Appley Tower on Ryde sea front, on the Isle of Wight. For which see reference1. A tower which I suspect is without any of the usual services and which I believe has been empty since the demise of the mineral shop - run, as I recall, by a long-hair husband and wife team. This ball was a good deal cheaper than some of the smaller balls made from more exotic minerals, some from South America. Quite robust despite the intricate striping, having surviving undamaged from having been kept outside for a few years.

Today, Google image search does rather better than raw Google managed back in 2013, as noticed at reference 2, turning up all kinds of similar balls. One candidate is something called rhodochrosite, which now, for a ball of this size, looks to cost rather more than I remember paying. The only catch being that my ball does not look anything like what is offered at reference 3. Maybe deeper thought will be applied.

While the exercise described at reference 2 seems wildly improbable now. I would be far too scared that I might drop the thing, quite apart from anything else.

References

Reference 1: https://www.wightpedia.org.uk/w/Appley_Tower.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/12/physio.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodochrosite.