Saturday 19 February 2011

Home

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

It's a misty, murky old day, but I was never so happy to be home. I am back in my muddy old gumboots; red patent shoes are but a dreamy memory. I am making chicken soup and watching the dogs scoot about for rabbits in the woods. Sometimes, when one goes away for a very few days, one returns to find dramatic natural changes. This has not happened this time. The snowdrops are looking more determined than when I went away, but everything else is still blatantly brown and bare. There is not even the whiff of a daffodil. It is, resolutely, February. But there is one tiny change, and that is that the birds are starting to sing their heads off. They are chasing each other about over the beech hedge, rehearsing the courting rituals of spring. So there is one hopeful harbinger.

Luckily, after a week on the smoky streets of the big city, I don't care how drack everything looks. It's my dear old place, and it does not need to put on its pomp for me, because I love it just the way it is.

Tangled ornamental cherry:

19th Feb 4

Delicate buds:

19th Feb 3

19th Feb 5

The snowdrops:

19th Feb 2

The winter-flowering viburnum, cheering everything up:

19th Feb 6

The woods were out of focus, because the light was so gloomy that my poor camera could not deal with it, but I think they look rather lovely anyway:

19th Feb 7

The burn is bursting its banks:

19th Feb 10

The gloom, in all its melancholy glory:

19th Feb 12

19th Feb 14

19th Feb 13

And the clouds rolling over the trees like smoke:

19th Feb 15-1

But never mind, because I have my dear little garden gate:

19th Feb 16

And the delicate beech leaves:

19th Feb 18

AND OF COURSE THE LADYSHIPS:

19th Feb 11

(What were you doing, running around in the south during fashion week, when you have the highest example of elegance and chic right here? Is clearly what they are thinking. And they would be quite right.)

The hill today is quite lost in the clouds, but it will come back when it is ready:

s

The only sadness about the clouds is that they will obscure the promised Northern Lights. The sun is throwing off outrageous amounts of hurling light and energy at the moment, which, for special scientific reasons I cannot quite follow, leads to unusually splendid aurora borealis. Somewhere, above the cloud cover, a light show is taking place, which I shall not be able to see. But who knows? Maybe tomorrow the sky will clear.

2 comments:

  1. Again the "out of focus" woods make me think of the impressionists, maybe this time the Canadian Tom Thomson.
    Is it copyright infringement if I paint these, I wonder? (Probably!)
    Welcome home!

    Pat (in Belgium, also foggy and damp)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Always nice to get back home and I love the sound of the word "drack". And of course the dogs look glorious.

    After the rains and floods we are having very very warm weather and unbearably humid.

    ReplyDelete

Your comments give me great delight, so please do leave one.

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin