Kew lit up for Christmas

A great opportunity to see Kew Gardens lit up for Christmas thanks to some good friends.  Have to confess, for all the coloured lights and even the light show from inside the giant greenhouse, the trees are still the stars.

Am I becoming used to the countryside?

Not that I was ever averse to being in the countryside but when we fist arrived last November, it came as rather a shock to the system.  The dark was spectacularly dark requiring a torch to negotiate the steps from the bungalow and the journey to the local pub.  Running out of milk meant a 5 mile round trip rather than a brief 10 minute stroll to the local Co-op.  I could no longer hear the neighbours turn on their taps, cough or have jolly conversations in the street just outside the front door - instead I rarely saw anyone, got woken up by owls and battled with a constant stream of insect life that wished to join me in the lounge.  A year on and this has become the way things are, a massive choice of muddy lanes in which to pick blackberries, hills to take in the views and an ever changing sky that seems so wide compared to living in town.  For 2015 I intend to spend more time learning to identify the constellations (other than Orion and the Big Dipper ) since I can now see them and am looking forward to the spring and another lawn full of wild violets.  Still need to keep the torch handy though.







SNOW AND SNOW

by Ted Hughes

Snow is sometimes a she, a soft one.
Her kiss on your cheek, her finger on your sleeve
In early December, on a warm evening,
And you turn to meet her, saying "It''s snowing!"
But it is not. And nobody''s there.
Empty and calm is the air.

Sometimes the snow is a he, a sly one.
Weakly he signs the dry stone with a damp spot.
Waifish he floats and touches the pond and is not.
Treacherous-beggarly he falters, and taps at the window.
A little longer he clings to the grass-blade tip
Getting his grip.

Then how she leans, how furry foxwrap she nestles
The sky with her warm, and the earth with her softness.
How her lit crowding fairylands sink through the space-silence
To build her palace, till it twinkles in starlight—
Too frail for a foot
Or a crumb of soot.

Then how his muffled armies move in all night
And we wake and every road is blockaded
Every hill taken and every farm occupied
And the white glare of his tents is on the ceiling.
And all that dull blue day and on into the gloaming
We have to watch more coming.

Then everything in the rubbish-heaped world
Is a bridesmaid at her miracle.
Dunghills and crumbly dark old barns are bowed in the chapel of her sparkle.
The gruesome boggy cellars of the wood
Are a wedding of lace
Now taking place.

Come on La Thuile get snowing :-)

La Thuile Snow Forecast |

Totternhoe Knolls in flower

Having arrived at our new home in November, we have been making regular visits to the wild places in the surrounding areas to watch the fields and woodlands change as 2014 turns towards summer.  The Knolls have the largest numbers of wild cowslips I  have ever seen and friends have mentioned the wild orchids which are just about to flower as May comes to an end. 

March

April 

 

 

May

 

Visiting the Ivinghoe Beacons Tree

This was a couple of weeks back now but ever since we moved, I have been fascinated by the single tree that appears to be climbing the side of the beacons hill, all on its own.  I see it when driving to the station and we can even see it from the house.  A couple of weeks back, we went walking on the beacons and I made a point of visiting the tree that seems to be such a striking and solo feature of this landscape.

 

Turns out that the tree is some sort of pine, the walk down to visit is steep and these are the views from the tree's point of view.  I'll find some images of it from the perspective of the road, but anyone familiar with this area will know the tree that I'm talking about.

This house has been far out at sea all night,

This seems most appropriate at the moment, opened the door earlier (burnt bacon incident) and the trees up on the knolls are roaring.  Rather than sitting in our chairs we are just about to head down the road to the pub.  Happy Saturday night everyone x

Wind
 

This house has been far out at sea all night,

The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,

Winds stampeding the fields under the window

Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky

The hills had new places, and wind wielded

Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,

Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as

The coal-house door. Once I looked up –

Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes

The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,

At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:

The wind flung a magpie away and a black-

Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note

That any second would shatter it. Now deep

In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip

Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,

And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,

Seeing the window tremble to come in,

Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

t e d

h u g h e s

1930–1998

Champoluc and I can finally ski

Consider myself very fortunate to have had a great week with husband, sister & brother in law and nephews in the rarely heard of secret ski area of Champoluc in the Italian alps.  Plenty of snow before we got there followed by a week of sunshine and enjoying being in a cabin up in the mountains. Finally after about three years I can finally say that I can ski and wish that I had tried many years ago since it is such an amazing experience to be in the mountains and not be quite as terrified.