Christmas Eve 2011.

Sunrise 24th December Christmas Eve  2011

Cornish Clotted cream sent by post. Great with mince pies!

Our Nativity figures on the hearth.

A Very Happy Christmas to Everyone!

Saturday December 10th 2011. Winter finally decides to arrive..

7.00am. The moon just setting behind the houses.

I woke up to an extremely heavy frost, and all the house roofs were white. It was
 -3C during the night. I looked out of the upstairs window watching the moon sinking out of sight below the horizon. The garden plants were etched in rime. Here is a lingering alchemilla mollis, determined to outlast the beginnings of the proper winter weather.    

Alchemilla mollis

As usual, I went outside and took some more photos once the sun began to appear. A fine bright start to the day. But cold.My breath hung on the air in a mist. It is finally feeling like winter, and the days are truly short. Sunset at 3.55pm. Sunrise at 8.00am. There are now only 8 hours of daylight, with the winter Solstice coming up on the 22nd December.Known as the Shortest Day of the year here in the UK.            

Bush roses still resisting the cold!

View from the loft bedroom. Always a vantage point!

Frost on the roofs. 

Sunrise. 8.10am. Taken from the front of the house. 

November 15th 2011. Falling leaves.

I was eating my breakfast this morning whilst watching the leaves on next door's cherry tree.
It's the same each year. The beautiful colours of late autumn appear almost like an Impressionist painting.
They were shivering in the morning light, like individual tiny flames. And surrounding the base of the slender trunk, a carpet of intense reds, yellows, oranges, ochres, and burnt siena. A veritable pallette for a sunset picture.    

Fallen  leaves of the  flowering cherry tree.

I am always amazed that these leaves fall suddenly all at once, all together, almost as if they decide it's time. Leaving the remainder to be blown by the wind or to succumb to the next cold snap. But I've never seen them all fall together. I woke this morning and there they were..................a glorious carpet.  

And the reason for this.......the new growth for next spring has pushed them aside. But spring will come again, and until then there will be more glorious days in amongst the dying of the year. Time to put the garden to bed in readiness for a winter sleep. And yet, I discovered one or two bulbs already beginning to tentatively send out green shoots.  

Our maple finally revealed in all it's late autumn splendour.  

As the sun begins to set around 3.15pm, and the darker evenings close in, the trees are preparing for their renaissance.................comforting thought when winter finally begins to bite.

November arrives........with late Spring-like temperatures!

Sunbright nasturtiums

Cherry tree leaves and yucca spikes. 

My "Sir Cliff Richard Rose", a present, blooming in the 17C heat of November 1st!,

Each year I plant packets of nasturtium seeds in early May and more in late June. They are nondescript dried nobbly seeds, and I am rewarded with bursts of vibrant colour in late summer 

through to early autumn. This year right up to November. 

The first day of November began mistily, and then cleared to a glorious clear blue sky, and warm sunshine. I walked up to our local shops without needing 

a coat. 

It was the warmest 1st November I can remember.    

 Bright yellow Forsythia flowers, usually appear in February!

A branch of my climbing hydrangea creeping up to the front door. 

Maple leaves.

Early morning 1st November 2011

Sunset November 3rd 2011

Polurrian Cove. The Lizard. Cornwall.

Polurrian Beach looking towards Mullion Island

Sometimes there is just no need for words......................................

Footprints in the sand

Lizard Point.......the furthest point South in England....where the Atlantic meets the Channel. .

The most Southerly Café in England. 

A place to unwind, and relax the mind............sitting with a latté and a piece of Cornish Heavy cake. Watching the shifting sea running with light. Maybe a seal or two in the water close by. What's not to love.

To misquote Rupert Brooke:

"If I should die, let it be said of me, that there is some corner of a Cornish field,

That is forever England.

There shall be in that rich earth, a richer dust concealed,          

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware
Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam.
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Hidden by the sea, blest by suns of home."  

Silhouetted against the light, the café on the headland. 

Song sung by Norah Jones

 "Feels like home to me, feels like home to me,

Feels like I'm all the way back where I come from

Feels like home to me

Feels like home to me

Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong."

Ever changing skies

Mullion Cove...................A place for reflection.

Mullion Cove. The Lizard. Cornwall

Mullion Cove

Sundown

. 

Autumn has finally taken over........with the promise of one more beautiful day.October 15th 2011

Snail on the yucca. 

I woke up this morning and looked out of the back window and there was frost on the extension roof.
Going outside I could see my breath as it made a small vapour trail.
Glorious autumn day in prospect.
Tiger came along the path and played with the fallen leaves before dashing up the apple tree, which also doubles as a scratching post for his claws.
A lone snail slid along the smooth leaf spike of my yucca plant.
I was amazed to see that the yucca has been completely mystified by the recent burst of high temperatures and  sunshine, so has begun to produce new flower spikes.
Wonder how long it will be before a real hard frost nips them in the bud?
But just the day for planting my wall flowers..........

And a coffee sitting at the patio table.........in the warm sun. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz      

Maple leaves turning colour

Early  morning 15th October. 

The last of the apples

Tiger in the apple tree 

My yucca has begun to send up flower spikes, thinking  it is still summer!

Goodbye summer? Was that your very last word.........................?

September 29th Bracebridge Pool. Temperature 27C!

 September 29th. Jamboree Stone,.Sutton Park. Temperature 27C

October 3rd Autumn fungi in summer-like heat.22C

October 3rd A walk in the park. 22C

A carpet of beech leaves. Sutton Park. October 3rd. 

Horse chestnuts left on a wall. Or "conkers" as we know them. October 3rd. 22C 

A patterned toadstool. 

England has been basking in Mediterranean temperatures! 27C today.

Bracebridge Pool. Sutton Park. 

Well, like those proverbial buses, when you are waiting for one , for what seems an age, along come three at once!
   This being the consecutive days of wall-to-wall sunshine we are presently experiencing here. And how!! 
I was starting to think about an autumn tidy up in the garden, when it suddenly switched back to summer mode! 
My geraniums are loving it, and the last of my roses are blooming again. But it seems a touch incongruous to be looking at leaves drifting from the trees in temperatures of 26C+. 
Never mind............it is such a joy to be under an over-arching infinite blue all day. And we had breakfast, lunch and dinner outside sitting at the patio table. 
  Yet for a couple of hours we took ourselves off for a long walk in the park.
It is one of the largest urban parks in Europe. http://www.sp.scnhs.org.uk/  

And so we wandered under clear blue skies basking in the warmth of the sunshine, and for me, the sense of open air freedom.
I love trees.
And to quote another of my poets, one William Wordsworth,
 

                    Light through trees near Blackroot Pool. Sutton Park                                                                                                 

 "In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay

      Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure,                        
      The heart luxuriates with indifferent things,
      Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones,
      And on the vacant air." 

I find trees somehow majestic,and ageless. A presence all of their own. So I 

guess I "waste my kindliness" on them! I always have a camera handy. Today 

taking photographs of the light as it sparkled on the pools, and twinkling down 

through the leaves, leaving patches of shifting shade 

below.                                                                                                                                              

A "toadstool" encountered as we walked along.

It seemed a little bizarre to see autumn fungi side by side with what was to all intents and purposes the wrong season! There were lots of differing kinds,but if I had stopped to take any more photos, we would never have made it home for lunch around 2.00pm, having set out from our house, on foot, at 10.30am.   

And as usual, I made a beeline for the ice cream man, who is to be found near the Jubilee Stone. 

Nothing like a "99" on a hot day! 

A big dollop of ice-cream with a chocolate flake, when eaten sitting on a bench, in the shade of a big tree, and a stirring small breeze wafting the air, is perfect!        I can never understand why Timelord declines to join me in this ritual!
So, we spent in this afternoon in the garden, eating our dinner in the evening warmth, under the patio umbrella. Until once again indoors, the sounds coming in from the open windows seem somehow more mellow. There is not a breath of wind and the dew is falling fast.
The stars have appeared. And tomorrow, so we are told, it will be another beautiful day..............time to sleep..................    

Little Bracebridge Pool. Sutton Park. 

And to quote William again.............
"---------------------IT seems a day

      (I speak of one from many singled out)
      One of those heavenly days that cannot die;"

It will live on in the memory when winter calls.