How to make your own icicles in one easy lesson

Take one outside tap and attach a plastic fixture for two hoses. Use it through the summer to water plants in two different levels of garden.

Forget to turn off the tap and drain the fixture for the winter.

 Obviously the water in the fixture froze and cracked the plastic. Then the morning sun defrosted it sufficiently for the tap - which was still turned on - to start sending water In a beautiful fountain onto the trellis and vegetation

 The back yard is like an icerink around the tap. The drain had frozen so the water was overflowing and I had to cling to the wall to get to it, turn off the tap and then scrape the drain with a piece of wood until the water rushed away.

I had spent at least three hours searching inside the house because I could hear running water but couldn't find it! So glad it wasn't much worse.