The last snow post of the season (I hope...)

I don't write anything for ages and then, when I do, it's about snow again. Can you tell that there's not a lot going on here at the moment?

As forecast, we had quite a lot of snow again over the last weekend in January (as pictured above), and I was glad that I decided to stay the night in Tottori instead of trying to get there in time for work on Sunday morning. As well as avoiding being late, I also got to enjoy a peaceful evening to myself in a comfortable hotel, paid for by someone else. Definitely no complaints there...

Now though, one week later, we are virtually snow-free! Here's the last little bit that was still hanging around on our lawn this afternoon...


... and looking out over the fields you can see that there's not much there either:

Of course, there are still huge mounds of snow (or 'snow mountains' as K calls them) in carparks and other places where the snow was cleared, but places that just had their natural quota of the stuff are pretty much clear now.

This change in the weather coincided exactly with the old Japanese calendar. Setsubun, the day dividing the seasons, was on February 3rd and on the 4th, the official first day of spring, it was warm and sunny and the snow was melting. Today was rather overcast but until now we've had really lovely weather and it truly feels like spring may just be around the corner...