February 14th 2014

 

Valentine's day is about sharing love with someone, or something special. Which is how this photo came to be taken tonight following a candlelit meal at home. As I placed my glass next to the wall this image, and a couple of other images, came into my head. Almost as if the shadow glass is about to embrace the actual glass in a loving moment. A surreal moment in fact as outside 60mph winds flailed the back of the house in a violent end to what has been a violent winter. Yet love is mysterious in its effects, for I am one who loves extreme weather, providing of course it involves no damage. The power of nature is all we should worry about in this life, like Saint Valentine himself who was associated with nature and love, if we abuse our master, the natural elemental world, nature will fall out of love with us and we will become its martyr ourselves.

February 13th 2014

 

I passed this garden walking into work this morning. This garden always has some of the earliest bulbs I know. In the distance the camellia tree is under-planted with snowdrops and aconites, later bluebells will flower before the tree canopy fully opens. Nearer the wall these daffodils are poking through the dusting of snow, which was the first wintry weather I'd seen in this area all winter. We're at the middle of February already and this week the sense that nights are lengthening, still reasonably light at 6pm, gladdens the heart. Spring is there as these brave daffodils show poking through the snow. I love the thought they've always been there through every season just waiting for now to show their true colours. 

February 12th 2014

 

It's been a stressful and very busy 2 weeks. With Julie being in hospital and then some side effects having a major impact on our lives, I have been up and down the M4 more times this week than I care to know. Tonight I got home exhausted, first time home for nearly a week and after supper and checking a few things I took a phone call upstairs. While taking the call I lay on the bed chatting, upon which once the call ended I stayed trying to collect my thoughts and gain a sense of normality again. One of those moments when we just have to stop. No other action is possible.  As I lay there I noticed this view out of the bedroom to the landing. I snapped this then I took another image with the door upright. However this sideways view from the bed as I relaxed in the dark epitomised my last few weeks. Slightly off centre, my emotions either light or dark, but okay really.

February 11th 2014

I never thought when I began this 1 year long blog that I'd live through the wettest (possibly the windiest) spell of winter weather in nearly 300 years. As such my daily ramblings recently have been something of a relentless tirade of  moist observations. Groucho Marx said "I'm leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it's not raining". Sadly I'm still here and love the South West when it's still raining.

Usually in the winter I'm out and about doing things, but like many this winter has been relentless wind, rain, dull overcast days, wet, flooding and we're about to be battered again down here in the South West as the chart below shows for Wednesday. As I sat in a traffic jam at 7.30am today caused by Bristol Water traffic lights due to the replacing of main water culvert along the A370 in North Somerset, the irony of being held up by water both above and below ground didn't fail to make me smile. Time for a whisky, once known as 'Aqua Vitae’ but now better known from the Gaelic, 'usquebaugh', or 'water of life'. Now that would be fun if usquebaugh flowed out of my taps. Slange var!

February 10th 2014

Ohh this is a nice surprise. It's the first time I've seen my garden in daylight for about 3 weeks, so tonight getting home at 5pm meant it was light enough to see what had happened in the intervening days. Apart from a range to plastic bags and other rubbish which had blown in on the breeze, plus a few pots blown over, nothing was amiss. But heading to the compost bin with a cornucopia of recyclable peelings I nearly stood on these daffodils which were planted on October 20th last year. http://365-2-50.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/20th-october-2013.html . I wrote at that time that it would be 4 months before I saw any evidence of these February Gold narcissii coming through and even in this mild weather, it's been 4 months near enough. Nature is brilliant, but I do need to get that fence painted I think!

February 9th 2014

In a walk this afternoon, around the village, we were caught out by one of those squally wintry showers that comes from nowhere, dumps skip loads of hail or wet snow down ones neck and then disappears as quickly as it had arrived leaving no trace of it having even existed. Having set off from home in sunshine by the time we got to the village green it was not pleasant at all. Diving into the lychgate of the village church gave some respite and while there the musings for today's blog entry emerged. Peering through the open archways it reminded me that lychgates were where the coffin was held prior to a funeral. Beyond the gate however I could see a carpet of snowdrops around the gravestones, so in a lull in the weather I wandered over to take some pictures. Some call the snowdrop 'Candlemass bells' and their shape reminiscent of an earring accounts for it's name. Yet the snippet of folklore I like is that it derives from Adam and Eve, despairing of the endless winter, Eve saw an angel, who caught some snowflakes and made them into spring flowers to bring hope for the arrival of spring. And that is what I mulled over as I wandered through the gravestones admiring these delicate but tough spring flowers, bringing a ray of hope to the cycle of life, birth, death, winter and summer we all endure from the cradle to the grave, but even on a day like today these snowpiercers give out their brilliance and a ray of hope! 

February 8th 2014

 

Two connected images 8 miles apart. In recent years Julie and I have gone out on Saturday morning for a coffee, or breakfast, or just to read the papers. Usually this is to Cobbs Farm Shop near Hungerford, or Plank's Farm Shop near Devizes. Today it was to the latter. The café is a funny ramshackled sort of a place but that's why we like it. The tables are old cable drums and the café also doubles up as a gift shop. The drive over there however was dramatic as this part of Wiltshire as with many other parts of southern Britain are flooded, serious localised flooding. Every field it seems is waterlogged and any part of the road that is low lying is awash. In fact in this relatively high part of Wiltshire we passed through 2 temporary traffic lights to control traffic through floods.  And so after our refreshments we drove back via Silbury Hill near Avebury, which I have now renamed the 'Isle' of Silbury. Quite dramatic in its floodwater moat but there is a more serious side to this in that it should not be in a waterlogged landscape and so as I later learned there are concerns over the stability of the chalk slopes on this 4,000 year old man made hill. I hope this is not an example of human history being eroded by the possible human induced change in the weather.