Life...

This morning I watched the sun come up - a great big, egg-yolk yellow ball, pulsing with life. On either side of it, the clouds spread out in baby pink, fading gradually into the pale blue of the wintry sky; and down below, on the horizon, hiding behind the spidery silhouettes of a row of bare trees, lay the Chilterns, all dressed in smoky purple.
Up above me, in a hawthorn tree, a robin warbled away, singing its heart out. What a way to welcome a new day! Life doesn't get much better...

The Jesse tree: Part 2

In Scandinavia, today is Little Christmas Eve; we are very nearly at the end of Advent. That must mean our Jesse Tree is almost finished! I think I will miss it when it's gone... *sniff* Actually, who I am kidding? By then we'll have put up our CHRISTMAS TREE! Ha ha haa! 
But I digress...

Here's what we've put on the Jesse tree since my last post:
14. A stone altar, made with little stones from our garden (Elijah's 'Battle with the Ba'als')

15. A pair of garden-wire tongs holding a painted fimo "burning coal" (God sends Isaiah)
16. Lots of glass 'tear-drops' (Jeremiah weeps over the people of Israel)
17. A stone watchtower, made from a cardboard vegetable tray (Habakkuk watching and waiting for God to rescue His people)
18. A painting (printed off from the internet), depicting a trowel and a brick wall (Nehemiah over-seeing the rebuilding of the city wall after the return to Jerusalem)

19. A scallop shell for John the Baptist (brought home from a Breton beach by my father)
20. A little fimo White Lily, made by my cousin and painted by me (Mary)
21. Another fimo creation, this time of a mother and child, for Elizabeth and her son John
22. A pencil for Zechariah

Tomorrow will be a little manger, for You Know Who - and there you have it! One completed Jesse tree...

Happy "Little Christmas Eve"!      

The tree of Jesse

"There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, 

and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit." 

Isaiah 11: 1

In the corner of our dining room, we have a large bare branch; this is our Jesse Tree. Each day during Advent we make an ornament based on a Bible story, going all the way from the creation to the birth of Jesus.

So far we have:

1. A round disc with a picture of a white-bearded man juggling planets (the creation)

2. An apple from our garden (Adam and Eve - the first sin)

3. A rainbow (God's promise to Noah)

4. Lots of gold stars cross-stitched on a blue background (God's promise to Abraham)

  (although my mother, who embroidered it, doesn't think it's good enough, and suggests we get rid of it and just hang lots of wooden stars all over the tree instead - mem. to self: find some wooden stars!)

5. A little collage of a ram caught in a thicket (the almost-sacrifice of Isaac)

6. A gold-painted string-and-matchsticks rope ladder (Jacob's vision)

7. A very natty mini multi-coloured coat made by my mother, complete with mini coat-hanger! (Joseph)

8. Another collage, this time of a bush surrounded by fire (the calling of Moses) 

9. A wooden carving of a sheep that my father brought me from the Czech Republic (the passover lamb) 

10. Two fimo stone tablets, complete with ten commandments! (Well, ten roman numerals anyway...)

11. A painted fimo ram's horn trumpet, officially called a "shofar", for the fall of Jericho (this is the effort I am most proud of!)

12. A gold crown for the beginning of the Kingdom of Israel (Unfortunately I copied this from a picture of English kings' crowns and so I put a cross on the top, forgetting that that's christian, which the Israelite kings certainly weren't! Oops!)

13. A gold shepherd's crook, taken from our PlayMobil St Nicholas (David, the shepherd king)

Tomorrow will be a stone altar for Elijah's 'Battle with the Ba'als'. Now how am I going to make that...?

My hand-made shofar

Aerial displays

Yesterday I saw two red kites clawing and tumbling in the air as they fought for food territories - which must, I imagine, be getting scarce now the harsh wintery weather has set in. And this morning, as I stood in the garden watching the sun rise in a glowing blaze of pink and tangerine, to my great delight two light aircraft appeared in the sky above me, flying perfectly synchronised loop-the-loops amidst hazy wreaths of pink and purple clouds...

"When roses bloom in December..."

"When roses bloom in December,
 when pears grow on an apple tree,
 when snowflakes fall in the summer,
 you'll be true to me..."
                                 - Snowflakes in the Summer, sung by the Everly Brothers

Well, I've never seen pears growing on an apple tree, nor have I seen snowflakes in the summer (though I have seen a hailstorm); but I've often and often seen roses blooming in December. Unfortunately, when the hard frosts come the poor little roses get punished for their pains...

                                     

The dying of the year...

A fine mist has descended on the countryside, and with it a deep sense of peace born of acceptance, and submission to a power greater than its own.
For Nature's first burst of autumnal defiance is over; she knows now that she cannot stop the advance of winter. She is like an old woman who knows her work is done (and has the quiet pride of knowing it well done), and now she lays aside her knitting, and sits quietly in her chair by the fire, slowly rocking back and forth, back and forth, waiting, without fear, for the end. And yet she knows, this wise old woman, that it is not the end...

"I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds."

Shall we have snow?

Where's your barn, robin?

 The North Wind doth blow,

and we shall have snow,

and what will the robin

do then, poor thing?

He'll hide in a barn and
keep himself warm, 
with his head tucked under
his wing, poor thing. 

A faintly embarrassing episode occurred in my house this morning.

About six months ago I made up my own tune to "The North Wind Doth Blow"; and a couple of weeks ago, I decided to turn it into an action song...
This morning I began to sing it again, and as I sang it I thought I would run over the actions as well, so as not to forget them. Unfortunately, just as I was acting out the robin (stomach out, head back, arms placed neatly behind, and a little self-important hop) my mother appeared immediately behind me. Ahem!
You might have thought I would have learnt my lesson after the equally embarrassing incident when a friend suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor, just as I was shaking my finger at "Miss Polly"...
(Could this be why most people give up singing action songs after the age of about nine, I wonder?)

Weatherwise comments: the staple of British small talk...

The weather is once again doing its duty by providing a topic for conversation. After days and days of a warmish, clinging, damp grey murk, when the sun didn't once show its face from dawn till dusk - depressing, but hardly worth comment - we can once again exchange weatherwise remarks as we pass each other in the lane:
"It's turned chilly suddenly, hasn't it?"
"Yes, we have to get dressed up warmly now."
"Still, I much prefer it to what we had before. I'd rather have it really cold and dry than all that miserable damp stuff."
"Oh, so would I. It was so depressing."
"And now everything's drying out, we can scuff in the leaves again!"
This last being my contribution. After all, it wouldn't be autumn without scuffing in heaps of brightly-coloured fallen leaves, would it?

Mission accomplished!

Old straw being emptied onto the 'modern waggon'

Yesterday I went out on a mission to take some photos of our local thatchers at work; and I succeeded. As my mother said, thatching is obviously one of those rare 'outside' building trades that doesn't mind being done in the damp! It also seems to be one of the few trades to have changed little since Milly-Molly-Mandy's day,  back in the 1920's. 
The ladders are metal now of course, and the 'wagon' in which the fresh straw arrives, and the old is taken away, is also metal and powered by an engine not a horse; but other than that, the differences are few...

"And then they put one ladder so that they could climb up to the roof, and another ladder with hooks on the end so that they could climb up on the roof... and [Father] and Uncle set to work busily to mend the hole in the thatch as well as they could, till Mr Critch the Thatcher could come."

        -  From 'Milly-Molly-Mandy Helps to Thatch a Roof' by Joyce Lankester Brisley

 

It's autumn, autumn, autumn...

"Bright yellow, red and orange, the leaves come down in hosts;

The trees are Indian princes, but soon they'll turn to ghosts;

The scanty pears and apples hang russet on the bough;

It's autumn, autumn, autumn late,

'Twill soon be winter now."

                            

- from William Allingham's "Robin Redbreast"

Shades of rumplestiltskin...

Lots of cottages around our village are being re-thatched at the moment. Often on my walks down the lane I see the thatchers out on the roofs, but yesterday, as I went to visit a nonagenarian neighbour (sadly rapidly dying of cancer), I saw them on the ground, stacking up their bundles of fresh straw in preparation for taking them up the ladders. Soon another cottage's grey, mangy mop will be turned to gold!

Guess which season...

This morning, when went to put on my garden clogs in preparation for feeding the birds, the big toe of my right foot hit against something hard; on closer investigation it turned out to be a hibernating snail.
In the first shock of my surprise I threw it out on the grass, but then I thought that was a bit mean, so I rescued it and placed it carefully in a dark place under our outside office. (My mother says I am a softie.)

But not everything in nature is preparing for winter. Our japonica bush is bearing fruits and blossom at the same time. Who says global warming is a myth?

The hedges red with haws...

                            'September'

I bear the scales, where hang in equipoise

  The night and day; and when unto my lips

I put my trumpet, with its stress and noise

  Fly the white clouds like tattered sails of ships;

The tree-tops lash the air with sounding whips;

  Southward the clamorous sea-fowl wing their flight;

The hedges are all red with haws and hips,

  The Hunter's Moon reigns empress of the night.

                 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Ants in the bathroom...

It's funny the things that one remembers from summer to summer, and the things one so easily forgets.
For instance, I always remember July and August as being one long spell of blazing hot days, but I forget about the still-frequent rain, and the chill that often comes in the evenings. I forget that when the blazing hot days do come, they often bring hot, sticky nights with them, when no matter how many times one turns one's pillow over and about, it's impossible to find a cool spot.
I forget that the garden goes quiet for a month, as the exhausted parent birds stop their singing, and hide amongst the undergrowth until their moulting feathers have regained something of their former glory. And I forget about the ants in the bathroom...

Summer!

Summer is here at last. We thought it would never come...

The mornings dawn bright and clear, and the deep blue sky stretches above us, uninterrupted by cloud, from morning till night. For some curious reason I am reminded of school sports day, though I can't imagine the weather was always so perfect as this.

But though we have no rain, the grass is still wet every morning from the heavy dew. As I did my garden chores this morning I kicked up my feet for sheer joy, and great showers of droplets flew out from the end of my shoes, and sparkled in the sunshine. When I looked down I saw little silvery spiders' webs in amongst the grass, twinkling as though they were spun from jewels...

Summer Not Found - Please Try Spain

After the wettest June since records began, one might have hoped that July would pull its socks up. Faint hope. We are just half way through the month, and already it has been even wetter than June.

But enough about depressing things, like the non-existent English summer! Let us talk of more cheerful topics: such as, that the baby robins are back again, with their centrically-expanding red breasts; and yesterday morning I saw what was either a baby wren or a baby gold crest hiding from the rain in the creeper above my bedroom window. The purple honey-scented buddleia is slowly coming into bloom, a clump of pink hollyhocks is growing up out of the midst of the rhubarb plant, and we have recently spotted some beautiful butterflies (species unidentified) in the garden. So life is still good! It will take more than a washed-out summer to dampen these hardened British spirits...

For a reliable weather forecast, ask the house martins...

June was over all a pleasant month - rather wet it is true (apparently the wettest since records began), but we were also treated to some blazing sunshine and brilliant blue skies. Had it not been for the strong winds, a few of the days might even have been called perfect summer weather!

I discovered something rather interesting recently. I had often heard it said that low-flying swallows are a sign of coming rain, though the clear blue skies and uninterrupted sunshine of the succeeding days clearly belied the tale; but the other day I read that this old wives' tale actually applies to house martins. It is they who swoop lower for the insects who are trying to escape the cold upper air - swallows just fly low whenever they feel like it. So when I was out walking yesterday, along the edge of a broad bean field, and I saw the house martins all around me flying as low as they possibly could, I thought I had better turn back. And sure enough, just as I reached the gate onto the road, the droplets began to fall...

"We're all going on a Summer Holiday..."

"We're all going on a Summer Holiday, no more working for a week or two;

fun and laughter on our summer holiday,

no more worries for me or you -

for a week or two..."

 

                                                                  

Towards the end of May my parents and I (and the dog) went over to our house in France for a fortnight's holiday.

Cow parsley, buttercups and pink roses

We arrived to find the verges up to my waist in cow parsley (to be strictly accurate it was Burnett Saxifrage, but it looks like cow parsley), and tall golden buttercups. The drive was liberally bespeckled with leggy daisies so overgrown that they wobbled, and bobbed around in the breeze; and there were roses everywhere. They grew up the sides of the house, and tumbled down over the barn; they crept sideways along the walls, their buds peeping out here and there through a tangled mass of greater celandine; and they arched up and over, and twined their blooms amidst the sweeping branches of the weeping willow.

The weather was gloriously sunny and hot, and I lay on a blanket under the willow tree every day, and read Geoffrey Trease and Jennings and William Mayne and Hans Brinker, and 'Where Matthew Lives', and other childhood classics, whilst the bees hummed busily around me, and the cuckoo sat at the top of a nearby sweet chestnut tree and 'cu-ckooed' with all his might. It was a good holiday!

A bunch of Queen Elizabeth roses

At the end of the fortnight we had a leisurely drive up through Normandy, took the ferry over from Caen, and arrived back very late on the Saturday of the jubilee weekend. It poured with rain all the way home from Portsmouth. Oh to be in England...

But before we left France, our Queen Elizabeth rose had come into full bloom; and so we felt that whatever the next few days might hold, our jubilee celebrations had at least got off to a good start.

Time to stand and stare

These weeks of rain, followed by a weekend of warmth and sunshine, have done their work. Over night it seems, our garden has changed. It is no longer bare and brown with just a few smudges of spring colour here and there; now the spidery branches are once more thickly covered with leaves, the creeping clematis is beginning to poke shyly through the hedge, and the lawn is dappled with fallen apple blossom.

In the mornings I make buckwheat porridge for breakfast, and now and then I will pause in the midst of my culinary hustle and bustle to look out of the window over the garden. Most days it is just being its ordinary self, but sometimes I see something special - maybe the greater spotted woodpecker tapping away at the peanut feeder; or a thrush standing quite still in the middle of the lawn; or a sparrow hawk resting on the hedge. And then I take a moment to stop, and stare...

"What is this life if full of care,
   We have no time to stand and stare?
 No time to stand beneath the boughs
   And stare as long as sheep, or cows.
 No time to see, when woods we pass,
   Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
 No time to see, in broad daylight,
   Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
 No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
   And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
   Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this, if full of care,
  We have no time to stand and stare."
                                   - William Henry Davies

Rotten trees and wild posies

Where the tree was...

Even before I look out of my window in the morning, the difference in the quality of light tells me that the tree isn't there.

Rotten on the inside.

I feel a little as though I have suddenly lost a close friend in a car crash. Every morning when I wake, the tree isn't there; and in the evening when I go to bed, the tree is not there. When I walk out of the front door I see in the empty expanse of sky that she is missing; and when I come home, she is still not there.
But she was a sick tree; and though it's possible that she might have lasted many years yet, it is also possible that the next storm would have brought her crashing down, and if that happened it would have been a miracle if no one (or no house) was harmed...

But life goes on, as my mother tells me. And though my tall, graceful sycamore has gone (and the red kites keep swooping over, with nowhere to land), the wild flowers are beginning to bloom in the hedgerows and verges. I went out yesterday and picked myself a posy, and tied it with a piece of grass.

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand,

  And a Heaven in a Wild Flower..."

  - William Blake

Black edging...

Dogmatix can't bear trees being pulled down

Black edging... That's what this post should have. You see, they are cutting down the great sycamore that stands opposite, and I don't think I can bear it. I feel sick in my stomach, as though a piece of me has been ripped out. I know the tree is rotten and dead inside, but that doesn't make it any easier. One doesn't refrain from mourning a loved one simply because their body was riddled with some awful disease.

The worst thing is being here while it's actually happening; every grind and roar of the electric saw as each branch is chopped off and thrown to the ground cuts me to the heart. I can almost feel it moan and cry.

My beautiful tree...

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

                                     - Joyce Kilmer

"I can see clearly now the rain has gone..."

"And in a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain."
                                                                                 1 Kings 18: 45

For weeks past the ground has been getting drier and drier. In the fields around the village great cracks appeared in the earth, as the land grew parched and weary; the levels in the reservoirs crept lower and lower, and the threatened hose-pipe ban became reality.

And then the rain came. On and on it rained, for days and days, sometimes in heavy-sheeted downpours, and sometimes in a gentle monotonous drizzle; sometimes it threw in a bit of hail, just for a change, and sometimes thunder and lightening would throw in their two penn'orth (so as not to feel left out of the fun).


They say (whoever 'they' are) that no amount of rain at this time of year will make any difference to Britain's Situation of Drought, because it all gets soaked up by the plants and there's none left to fill the reservoirs; perhaps that is true, but I think there would have been quite enough left for the reservoirs, if only the water people would keep them in proper trim, and not let them leak all over the place. 
However! the plants certainly did soak it up; and in just a week our lane has been transformed from a brownish youth, only just out of winter, into the full verdant glory of Spring's young womanhood...

Early morning walk

Yesterday, my dog and I went for an early morning walk. We set off straight after breakfast; the sun shone, the sky was blue, and every thing looked fresh and bursting with life after a few days of rain. Up above, the flag on the church flapped joyously in the breeze, and in the copse a thrush sang.

++++++++++++++++

I am rather fond of gates.
They have such an intoxicating combination of invitation and forbidden entrance, that I cannot walk past even the most mundane without feeling a little twinge of excitement. On our walk today I had the joy of walking through two kissing gates (so romantic, even if one is, in fact, on one's own...), the second of which opens onto a glorious view of the Chilterns.

We walked slowly on, taking a little path beside the copse where I heard the thrush, and came across another gate; and here was richness! An old iron, padlocked specimen, it's stone pillars covered in ivy, and the path beneath all over-grown with grass, it stood tall and proud in its half-forgotten state. I should not have been surprised to know that the house it led to was named Satis...

Who knew Miss Havisham lived in Oxfordshire?

It also reminded me of Shelley's Ozymandias, except that these 'legs of stone' were surrounded by green fields and not lone and level sands:

"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Peter

On the eve of Good Friday, Jesus was arrested. His trial lasted all night and well into the morning. All his followers took fright and ran away, leaving Jesus to face death alone; only Peter followed along behind in the darkness. When Jesus was taken to the high priest's house, Peter crept into the yard outside, and tried to squeeze in unnoticed beside the night-watchers' fire; but a Galilean has an accent, and a firebrand follower of the strange new teacher who claimed to be God, was likely to be remembered by the more observant members of the public...

"Hey, you! Aren't you a friend of the man who's been arrested?"
"No! No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are. I've seen you with him."
"No. You must be mistaken. I don't know him."
"Of course you do. You're obviously from Galilee, like him. I bet you're one of those 'followers'."
Poor Peter. If they kill the leader, how much more quickly will they kill the follower.
"I told you, I've never met him!" he cried.
And then the cock crowed. What was it Jesus had said to him? "Before the cock crows today, you will disown me three times."
And Peter went outside, and wept bitterly.

When my mother was at university, a friend taught her a song telling the story of that night. Over the years, it has become a family favourite. Never having come across it anywhere else, we have come to the conclusion that it must have been actually written by that friend - or perhaps a friend of that friend. The song is called Stand in the Shadow, Peter. I have recorded myself singing it, and you can find it in the column on the right.

"Bluebirds flying..."

"I wanna see the sunshine after the rain;
  I wanna see bluebirds flying over the mountains again."

Last week was dank, damp, and dreary. A permanent milky whiteness hung thickly over the fields, waiting to be burnt off by a sun which never came out for more than half an hour a day - if we were lucky. Occasionally we had a little rain (though nothing like enough to hold off the threatened hose-pipe ban), but even on the days when there was none at all, a general murk of moisture hung in the air which dampened everything and everyone. It hung in little droplets on the trees, and settled in a silver mist over the grass; and it got inside me, and slowed my body down to such an extent that for a whole week I functioned at the pace of a sickly snail...

But every weather has its plus sides, if only you can find them, and depressing, illness-inducing dampness is no exception. As I came back from church on my mobility scooter, the delicate scent of wet grape hyacinths rose to greet me. It took me back twenty years!

And of course, the dampness didn't last. I wouldn't live in a country that had a climate for all the jewels in Christendom. Give me changeable weather any time!
On the very day that I wrote to a friend, crying out for sun, the sun came. Unfortunately, I was so excited by this sudden change that I behaved rather foolishly, and managed to contract both sunstroke and a chill at the same time. This combined to give me the curious and decidedly unpleasant sensation of being on ship in a slightly choppy sea, and I was unable to maintain an upright position during the whole of the second half of the evening; even walking down our short corridor resulted in the kind of clutching at furniture more often seen on a ferry crossing the English channel. However, I am all restored to health this morning, and ready to enjoy the rest of the weekend (hopefully in a more sensible, and slightly less theatrical manner...)

"The flowers appear on the earth"

 "...for behold, the winter is past;
     the rain is over and gone.
  The flowers appear on the earth,
     the time of singing has come...

 Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
      and come away.
 O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
      in the crannies of the cliff,
 let me see your face,
      let me hear your voice,
                                                    for your voice is sweet,
                                                         and your face is lovely."
                                                              
                                                                  - from the Songs of Solomon

Daffodowndilly

She wore her yellow sunbonnet,

  She wore her greenest gown;

She turned to the southwind

  And curtsied up and down.

She turned to the sunlight

  And shook her yellow head,

And whispered to her neighbour:

  "Winter is dead."

                                        -- A A Milne

"This is the day..."

"This is the day which the LORD hath made;

we will rejoice and be glad in it."                             - Psalm 118: 24

I don't know about you, but I think that a Leap Day is terribly exciting, even when nothing special happens. Every second of every hour feels like a present, to be celebrated and rejoiced in with uplifted hands; for it is a reminder that every day we live, in truth, is a gift of grace...

We went out on a drive yesterday, and I saw lots of encouraging signs of Spring: a diddy-wee brown calf lying curled up next to its mother; a tractor sowing seed in the middle of a ploughed field; a crow flying over head with a great long twig for its nest clamped firmly in its beak; and a whole lot of lambs gambolling and frisking about, as though they simply couldn't contain their joy at being alive.
Even a short walk down our lane brings ample proof that the season is turning. The daffodils, whose tightly furled buds have been tantalising us for weeks past, are finally coming out in triumph, and the line of dancing yellow trumpets looks like a string of gaily-clad heralds proclaiming the arrival of their Queen.

But despite all this, I'm not sure that Winter has quite given up. It hangs on by its fingertips, every now and then throwing out a long icy tenticle of chilly weather, as if it would lay claim to the full forty days given it by Candlemas/Groundhog day...

Fair Maids of February

The snow has melted away, but the ground is still dotted here and there with clumps and swathes of white, as the fair maids of February enjoy their hour of glory. They always remind me of my grandmother, who was I think particularly fond of these delicate harbingers of spring; and I share her delight at the sight of these pearly white jewels with their short green stems, who venture out so bravely in the cold to give us hope and remind us that winter never lasts forever.
My grandmother was a keen watercolourist, especially of flowers, and come January/February, her painting table would always contain at least one little vase of snowdrops, from which we would receive painted images wishing us much love and joy. As I went around the garden the other day, picking one snowdrop here, and a couple there (so that no clump should end up looking too bare), I thought of her, and echoed her life's refrain: Te Deum!

-8˚

This is the temperature the car thermometer registered when my father drove off to work this morning. Of course, I realise that compared to what Eastern Europe is going through it is a mere pittance, but it feels pretty darn cold to us!
Still, it always brings out the bird life. A female bullfinch came hopping round the patio this morning - the first time I've seen one all winter - and three robins have been occupying the same territory with hardly a scuffle between them, which is more than can be said for the starlings. Is it impossible for two starlings to eat from the same food dish without having stand-up fights every three seconds? And always accompanied by that un-earthly screeching that sounds as though the Doctor's Tardis is landing.

Last year, when the winter went on and on and the snow hung around for weeks on end, I began to dream.
I dreamt of blue seas and bluer skies; of daisies and irises and masses of tumbling roses; of tropical lemons and pink-rendered houses, and donkeys giving rides on yellow sands; and I dreamt of a sun shining hot and strong, creating dazzling sparkles on the sea below...

Meanwhile, back in reality, the sky continued to be heavy and overcast, the sun carried on being weak and thin, the snow still lay thick on the frozen ground, and life was generally murky and depressing. So I decided to make a collage.

It was a pretty big collage, made of two A3 sheets taped together (it had to be large enough to fit in all my requirements and still look like a plausible landscape), and it took me at least a month to finish it. I kept running out of deep-blue sky, and had to cadge travel-magazines from obliging friends and relatives.

By the time I did finish it, I had become so immersed in my fantasy-world that I felt as though I really had just got back from an exotic holiday; and when I finally looked up from my completed picture, I found the snow had melted away, and spring had arrived. My Summer Dream had created for me a Wrinkle in Time...

"Baby, it's cold outside!"

Brrr! For three days now the outside temperature has hardly risen above freezing. The birds are once more creating Heathrow-type activity levels at the feeding station; and even our Riverford* man came to the door in a woolly hat this morning (and he is no wimp when it comes to cold weather).
However, we have no snow - yet. They say we should expect some at the end of the week. I wonder if we shall have a white Candlemas? How romantic that would be!

*Riverford is an almost-nation-wide organic vegetables-and-meat delivery company.

"Let's start the New Year right..."

"Let's watch the old year die, with a fond good-bye, and our hopes as high as a kite;
How can our love go wrong, if we start the New Year right?" 
                                                                                        - Bing Crosby song 

I have decided that Candlemas should be the true New Year. The first of January didn't feel in the least like a new year to me, and as to having the end of the old year on one day, and the beginning of the new one on the next, I find it incomprehensible. Such a rush! It hardly leaves time for the soul to turn round on the spot, let alone change gear. Last year, therefore, I decided to bid farewell to the dying year on Hallowe'en, and now I prepare myself to welcome in the new 'living' one on Thursday, which will be Candlemas*.  

Not that there has been much 'dying' around here. Today I saw National Trust advertising Snowdrops in February at one of their properties, but I shall be surprised if there are any snowdrops left by February. Despite the two cold-snaps we've had since Christmas (the second of which is still upon us), and the traditional show of bare, spidery trees displaying their naked silhouettes against slate-grey skies, the last few weeks have seen the coming of what feels suspiciously like Spring, and the flowers are coming on like Billy-o. Only the other day I noticed a new peach rosebud in the left-hand flower bed, and the yellow aconites and purple periwinkles are making a fair show at ground level. The snowdrops, of course, are abounding, and everywhere their little white caps crowd together in little clusters amongst the grass.

And as to the daffodils! After that day a few weeks ago, when I counted fifteen of them outside the post office, I gave up altogether... 

*(Which probably means I ought to make some New Year's Resolutions. Only I can't think of any. Is that a good sign, or a very bad one?!)