Day 46, year 2 - Winter daisies.
Its easy to look at the broad sweep of a landscape and see the beauty within it. We’re wired for a connection to the land and for finding landscape beautiful on the large scale.
Sometimes though, if you look closely in unexpected places, like nestling in a sunny spot between the roots of a lime tree, you can find a beautiful little treasure. Its had sub-zero temperatures. Its been buried beneath inches of snow. And yet somehow these plucky little daisies are still blooming in January!
If you’re only looking at the large scale you can miss the little surprises. If you look at the large scale and don’t think there is beauty within it - in a town or city, perhaps - then you can miss the little pockets of surprising beauty….like daisies blooming in January on an average suburban street.
Keep your eyes open, look and truly see, and you never know what you might discover.
Day 26, year 2 - Unexpected arrivals.
The sudden cold snap and snow of a month ago seem a dim and distant memory now. Just as last year, this winter is once again unseasonably warm. If anything, even warmer than last year and its effects are starting to show.
It was the bubbling song of a blackbird that first caught my attention today. Not a call, but song, the sort of song you only expect to hear at the onset of spring. Looking down and the effect of the high temperatures is very clear. Those are daffodils and crocuses breaking through already….and its winter.
Its still January. Still the first week of January no less, the first week of the year, and yet underground and in the trees nature seems to think otherwise. Things aren’t right. Should the cold suddenly return then there will be problems indeed.
Day 343 - November Rose
I’m as surprised as you are to see this today! A perfect rose, blooming in the last third of November, yet saw it today I did, in a sheltered little corner.
Another strangely warm day, indeed the strangely warm November, has undoubtedly helped. Today was warmer than some days we had in June! Queer times and getting queerer.
Day 253 - oh so meadowsweet
I love seeing these wonderful wild flowers nestling in the verges of the fields and lanes. They’re like sprays of champagne bubbles, turned into flowers.
Day 249 - the bright bunch
Bringing summer cheer indoors, the piercingly bright colours of this bunch of flowers has certainly lit up my little hobbit hole.
Day 245 - berries and flowers
All along the hedgerows and gardens today, flowers still to become berries and berries that have long since stopped being flowers are shining with colour in the sunlight. The high days of flowers are fading into mellow fruitfulness. You don’t have to look far to see beauty.
Day 239 - the flowers that bind
Hedge Bindweed is not a plant that had a lot of creativity put into its name, it must be said. Hated by gardeners that seek perfection, I find it difficult to hate when it comes into flower and snakes to the top of the hedgerows.
Pure white and trumpeting summer, they shine in the sunlight and look beautiful to me, dotted around the overgrown hedges and corners of the fields around the woods….but then again, I don’t have to deal with trying to control them!
Day 224 - summer skies
Clouds and bright blues, flowers and a hundred shades of green….that’s what a shire summer should be.
Day 222 - rolling over to the clover
The wheel of the year moves a little and as one bloom ends another takes its place. Where just a few days ago it was all daisies now clover flowers in it’s place.
Day 221 - bumbling onwards
I do have a soft spot for bumble bees. It’s something to do with their approach I think. Slow and steady, bumbling about, but they get things done…..plus they like to stop and smell the flowers!
