December 1st 2012

A glorious rainbow greeted the first day of December. It glowed across the dark sky. The roofs were still frosty after an extremely cold night.
We were driving to visit our son and his family after breakfast. A journey of around an hour and forty minutes by motorway.

In the afternoon we all went to the local Bristol Zoo, and watching our grandson as he looked at all the various animals, birds, fish and reptiles gave us a great deal of pleasure. There is something special about the innocence of a young child fascinated by all around him. We saw the seals being fed, and enjoyed the penguins in their pool and rock habitat. I guess the cold weather suited them!            

End of the afternoon, 4.15pm.
Time to go home.

The Christmas lights came on before we left for home, not before we went into the restaurant for mugs of hot chocolate. Mmmmmm.  

Just what you need after a stroll round the Zoo.

Only we substituted our steaming mugs of indulgence for the tea!

All to soon we were back on the motorway, now in darkness, but with a huge yellow moon
in the starlit sky, which seemed to follow us home. Now in view, now hidden behind buildings or peeping through black skeletons of the trees. 

Last day of November 2012.

So, November, you are almost at the end of your time. Tomorrow beckons, December........

Another year slipping by....And now we have Christmas lights to brighten the gloom, and this weekend will light the Advent candles on the hearth.        

15.05 November 30th 2012

 We have had visitors from Dallas staying here during the past two weeks so no new blog posts. Then I wasn't well, resulting in the frustration of sitting up through several nights, as I could not breathe easily. Thankfully that is on the wane. What usually happens when I surface from the depths is a bout of activity, trying to catch up on the things which were left on hold. I can write my name in the dust on the wooden furniture! But it was sunny and bright, although extremely cold. So  no dusting took place.
I filled up the bird feeders in the garden, fat balls and nyjer nibbles amongst them. I was thrilled to see later that morning my redpolls returning to the nyjer feeder. They love the seed.

Common redpoll

As they were here last winter, and then left to go to pastures new, it made me glad to see them once more.              

15.06. Sun going down.

16.15 Sunset 

Goodbye November, as you quietly slip away. Time for tea.
  

Musings as November draws to it's close.

Frost. 11th November. Remembrance Sunday. 

Last week the tree surgeon came to prune the apple and maple, and trim the hedges and bushes. He comes once a year. The garden is now ready to sleep. 

Nevertheless in bright cold days, (which have been few and far between lately), I will be out there clearing the last of the leaves and cutting back the dead foliage of the annual plants, which die back into the soil until the return of the spring.           

The maple before pruning.

"The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves."

 John Updike

Foggy morning November 15th

 "So dull and dark are the November days.

The lazy mist high up the evening curled,
And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze;
The place we occupy seems all the world."-   John Clare, November

The last of the leaves in the mist.
15th November.

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it,
the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show." -   Andrew Wyeth

I don't know if that is what I prefer, although I like autumn colours. And walking through crisp fallen leaves as they crackle and scrunch underfoot.

Here the last two days we have had torrential rain and parts of the UK  have once more been flooded. This time last year we had a water shortage!! 

Unbelievable now.  

The winter of 2011 was extremely dry. 

And I heard  that we may expect snow by the end of the week..........

Well, that remains to be seen.

But there may be a brief return to bright cold days beforehand. 

It now goes dark in the evenings by 4.15pm. 

  Time for tea! 

November 2012

Sunrise 7.00am 6th November 2012

November has finally begun, and now the real evidence of the year dying on it's feet is seen in the trees and gradual decline of life in the garden border. This morning began with a beautiful sunrise, and the quiet stillness of a day which seems to hold it's breath. A kind of waiting.......then the everyday sounds gather pace.

I have planted wallflowers for their colour next spring. 

 Aside from the cheeping of a flock sparrows hidden in the shrubbery, there are now no beautiful fluid liquid songbirds, their voices silent till spring comes round once more. Only the robin, whose bright red breast cheers us in the winter months, sings out his shortened song. 

Last night, being 5th November, is known as Bonfire Night. A tradition whose history goes back to the time when Guy Fawkes was arrested on that date in 1605, with gunpowder in the cellars of The Houses of Parliament, in London. It became known as the "Gunpowder Plot". As people celebrated  the failure of the attempt on the life of King James the first, they lit bonfires and burnt effigies of popular hated figures. 

Children still make "Guys" to put on top of their bonfires. When we were young we used to make them and then take them round the neighbourhood, asking "Penny for the guy".                    

 We used to collect wood for weeks.
Here is a letter I included in  my blog of reflections on my childhood days.

http://capturinghistoryforthenextgeneration.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/blog-post.html

 So last night the dark night sky was punctuated by the brilliant starburst colours of skyrockets, and the sound of the bangs of fireworks. A cold frosty clear night where the stars were so bright in the heavens.  
Tiger took refuge in doors.
And as for me, I was at choir rehearsal, beginning, with the others, to sing through two Christmas  carols, which we will include in our concert in early December. Only 4 rehearsals to go!          

Tiger sitting one of his favourite "scratching posts".

October 28th Monday

The Burning of the Leaves. 

Now is the time for the burning of the leaves, They go to the fire; the nostrils prick with smoke Wandering slowly into the weeping mist. Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves! A flame seizes the smouldering ruin, and bites On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist. The last hollyhock's fallen tower is dust: All the spices of June are a bitter reek, All the extravagant riches spent and mean. All burns! the reddest rose is a ghost. Spark whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild Fingers of fire are making corruption clean. Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare, Time for the burning of days ended and done, Idle solace of things that have gone before, Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there: Let them go to the fire with never a look behind. That world that was ours is a world that is ours no more. They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour, And magical scents to a wondering memory bring; The same glory, to shine upon different eyes. Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours. Nothing is certain, only the certain spring. Laurence Binyon

October 21st A morning of gossamer like cobwebs everywhere.

"The gossamers wander at their own will."

Edward Thomas. "October"

It was an amazing sight this morning in the mist, to see the cobwebs everywhere. Why do the spiders make these webs in October? I have no idea.They must know, somehow, that there will be plenty of flies and insects for them to trap.
I watched a spider yesterday in our front garden, as his web had been broken, by this morning there was another one, perfectly spun.

It reminded me of a saying my father used to read to me when I was small.

"If at first you don't succeed
Try and try again.
'Tis a lesson you must heed
Try and try again".

This was after he recounted the story of Robert the Bruce of Scotland and the Spider. A tale I loved to hear!

http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/bruce_and_the_spider.htmlg

I just realised that the Scottish people are voting tomorrow in a referendum to say whether or not they want independence from the United Kingdom! Maybe the legend will come true once again!! Or not! .......    

Almost time to put the garden to bed........October flower beds are beginning to die back into the soil.

October

Edward Thomas. 

"The green elm with the one great bough of gold 

Lets leaves  into the grass slip, one by one, -

The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white........

.......And the wind travels too slow to shake the fallen beech leaves from the fern......"   

(extract)

Our neighbour's beautiful tree. 

The plants in my borders are fading. Seed heads ripening

Last of my sunflowers

Morning mist 17th October