We woke up to find the world edged with white. It was the most spectacular hoar frost that I have ever seen. Mind you, the one last year was almost as good. However before that I had not seen anything that could come close. Of course to fully appreciate the beauty you have to go outside and look at it carefully. I nearly did not go out but I am so glad that I did. I thought that I saw it last year and took photos then as well, surely I would just be duplicating that. I was wrong. Even last year I had not appreciated the delicate beauty of this amazing phenomenon. This was not just a build up of ice on all the trees and hedges. This was an accumulation of translucent crystals. Each crystal as unique as a snowflake because that is what they were. But instead of forming in the clouds these flakes had formed on all the twigs and branches. In places the frost was so thick as to look like foam from only a few feet away. Each location and variety of plant had its own peculiar amount and density of frost. When I first looked out of the window I had thought that it was snowing but it was actually the flakes of frost becoming detached from their host and falling down, loosened by the sun and warming air. I felt truly blessed to be able to observe and record a tiny fraction of this exquisite event.