Week 4

Racing sunrise; Arthur Rackham trees; the 'right' kind of frost

Hello, it has been a properly wintery week here of frost and sunrises, and very enjoyable for walking fast in, if not quite so great when you’re sitting around at home trying to work…brrr…

Every week I write here about three things that have made my week notably ‘this week’ish - what in my life has said ‘last week of January’? Before I do so this week, I want to do a tiny bit of congratulation. When I started this back in early autumn everything was changing rapidly and I remember writing how the real challenge would be these first months of the year, when everything essentially stood still. And it kind of has, but we’ve done it anyway, and it has made me notice and appreciate the tiny differences that perhaps we wont spot so much when spring is swinging in with all its might. Judging by your comments it has done the same for many of you too, so well done us, we’re through the toughest month, I would say. Thank you so much for joining in so enthusiastically, even during the bleaker times.

Which brings me to your comments. Every week we have a quick round up of the highlights of your comments from the week before and create a kind of ‘Last week poem’, well I think so, anyway... So here is your ‘Week 3’:

Greeted at the allotment by little green garlic shoots poking through the earth, despite hard and crunchy mud underfoot; a walk through a dark park with stars twinkling through the naked tree branches; harvesting the last of the parsnips whilst a Robin forages in the leaves; a starling murmuration and the sound of 600,000 wings moving together, like hushed magic; a new tradition of making Seville orange marmalade to a late Grandmothers recipe; a young male blackbird practicing his song; a toddler learning to say ‘snow, snow mummy!’; a hugely low tide, with beautiful light; looking at the Pleiades, the Beehive Cluster in Cancer, and Mars blazing red near Taurus on cold, frosty nights; car windscreen frost like those 6 pointed snowflakes a child would draw; a panoramic view of the sunset lighting up the clouds all around like sky lanterns; snow settling on the coast in north-west Cornwall; clearing out a patch of brambles and finding an oak seedling and thinking of the phrase 'the bramble is mother of the oak'; standing on the street star gazing with a four year old daughter and spotting Jupiter and Mars; double strength Amoxicillin beside the bed; the dawn pavement twinkling like a disco dancefloor; finishing work and it still being light (!); a flock of long-tailed tits on the feeder; a bunch of daffodils in a jar on the desk, spring scent wafting; early pink blossom on the street trees; a huge holly bush with 20-30 sparrows in it, judging by the noise; a blooming amaryllis, bright red; a ski-slope-blue sky; parsnip pancakes; catkins hanging cathedral-style over a path; magnolias blossoming too soon (in California though); leaving gifts for the robin to thank him for his singing; sweet pea seedlings; pointing out oak buds to a toddler and him picking up a leaf and pressing it to his face for several minutes.

What a beautiful week you have all described. Actually does make me love winter.

Anyway, here’s mine, and speaking of beauty…

Racing sunrise

Bristol is a city of hills. Some parts of it are really obviously hilly - we boast the steepest residential street in England for instance - and lots of places have steep inclines and dramatic views. My part of Bristol is much more gently sloped, you don’t particularly notice it, and yet one of the highest points in the city is a few minutes from my house. It coincides with a part of Horfield Common that looks east. In other words, it’s a perfect dawn-watching spot.

This week the sun has been coming up at just the right time for me to catch it IF I got out of my warm bed when I’m meant to and got out of the house quickly and marched fast up the hill. But did I? The picture at the top of this post was taken on a day when I didn’t quite make it, and had to take a picture of the most stunning sunrise from a slightly less impressive spot, but on Tuesday I did make it, and I caught the most beautiful morning. This picture is actually taken on my way back from the sunrise spot, as the rosy pink sun lit up the icy park in slices. It was just so beautiful. The most stunning morning of winter, for me.

Next week the sun will rise earlier again and so this is probably it for me and beating dawn, but what a cracker.

Arthur Rackham trees

I had a book of Rapunzel illustrated by Arthur Rackham when I was little, and these pollarded trees always make me think of it. They will start to grow soon and no longer look like this. I know some people hate it, but I love it. So gothic.

In fact, I realise now having done a bit of research that his trees, though almost always pollarded, were actually pollarded and then neglected, to allow them to turn into humanoid horrors, and so strictly speaking these street trees are most probably a little too well loved to qualify.

The Trees and the Axe, Arthur Rackham, from Aesop’s Fables

The ‘right’ sort of frost

You might think that to be a garden photographer all you have to do is search out beautiful gardens and snap pictures of them. But no. The trick, the thing that separates the hum drum garden photographers from the fabulous ones, is the waiting. They find a promising garden, they cosy up to the owners, they check out its angles and its best bits and then…they wait. What they are waiting for mostly is light. Garden photographers love dawn and dusk, when light is soft and golden and sprinkles everything with magic. But there is also a premium on winter gardens, as there are so few in comparison to summer ones, and garden magazines need to keep producing magazines all year round. What you want for them is snow, or frost. I was texting a garden photographer friend a couple of weeks ago on a frosty day and asked if she had been up at dawn snapping and she said she had planned to but it turned out to be the ‘wrong sort of frost’. I saw this iced bramble this week and thought ‘that’s the right sort of frost’. So a thought this week for all the exhausted but smug garden photographers who I hope got their gardens in the bag this week. And when you spot icy, beautifully lit winter gardens in garden magazines next winter, I will bet a good few of them were snapped on these past few days.

That’s it from me. In case you haven’t spotted it, we are now having a regular Sunday chat. In the chat part of the app you can drop your own pics of the week, and we love to see them. Here is a post on how to find the chat, if you haven’t yet.

In the meantime, please do leave your week’s seasonal moments in the comments below.