The Turning of the Seasons – A Corner of Cornwall

The View from Here: walking in the writer’s footsteps (part 2)

Continuing from Part one

Photographs with a different colour palette this time (bar one). Taken within half a mile of home.

Time passed. April stepped aside gracefully; May burst onto the scene. And I have adapted. Same walks, different perceptions. I lose my fear of emptiness. I see the flowers erupting along the lanes. Bluebells and stitchwort, dandelions and celandines. Dainty violets and bold purple orchids. Tardy primroses, still tucked shyly in nooks and crannies and the delicate white spheres of wild garlic which proliferate along stretches of shady pathways. Continue reading “The View from Here: walking in the writer’s footsteps (part 2)”

The View from Here: Christmas in a Box

… much as I love Christmas and despite the melancholy which often accompanies the passing of the season, all good things should draw to a proper close before they outstay their welcome

Epiphany. A favourite word. Today is the Christian Feast of the Epiphany – the reveal of Christ by the Magi – and an occasion marked by tradition and celebration in many countries as well as by religious services. Today is also known as Little Christmas among Irish and other Christians when men traditionally took on the household duties for the day and women spent the day together. Mostly I think of it as the day after Twelfth Night: the end of the twelve days of Christmas and the day by which decorations must be taken down and put away. Continue reading “The View from Here: Christmas in a Box”

The View from Here: as August arrives

There is always renewal; there is always change

The final hours of July passed wet and cool, brooding and overcast. And welcomed. I applauded the dimming of the light; I turned inward and pondered the prescience of autumn. My heart has always belonged to autumn. Continue reading “The View from Here: as August arrives”

The View from Here: colours of July

… from the garden

It is high summer. We’ve had some very fine weather but also brumous days when the mist and clouds merge and don’t lift all day, and smuggy days when the humidity hits hard and strong. But we have escaped the fiercest temperatures of this month. There are occasional compensations for living in an area that is wetter, milder and more temperate than most. Continue reading “The View from Here: colours of July”

The View from Here: an early May snapshot

For just a few fleeting weeks, green sings and has its moment in the sun.

May 1^st is considered in some quarters to mark the coming of summer. The meteorological beginning of summer comes later, and this year’s weather would support that. In this Corner of Cornwall there has been very little merry-making in the merry month of May. May, thus far, has been cold and stern with northerly winds which carry a sharp bite and a nip of frost, which has blackened tender tips and kept me largely indoors. But not always. There have been interludes of sunshine even if temperatures have remained stubbornly low.

Continue reading “The View from Here: an early May snapshot”

The View from Here: snatches of spring

This year we seem to have been dancing back and forth, dallying between the seasons on a daily basis.

Since April arrived, we have been thrust back into winter. Those balmy February days which turned my head and had me harbouring thoughts of an early spring seem a long way back. Continue reading “The View from Here: snatches of spring”

Who Killed Cock Robin?

Not I, said the fly

There is something in the air on this final February Saturday. The light is bright; the sky is clear. There’s a strength to the sun that belies this shortest of months. There is birdsong on the wing and between the leafless branches. Into the blue falls the sharp mewl of buzzards, too high to be easily spotted but proclaiming their presence with haunting calls which shred the air like darts and remind me of my small place against this wide empty sky. Continue reading “Who Killed Cock Robin?”

The View from Here: when the words don’t come

I had accepted that for the moment I can’t write – nothing publishable at least. It will pass. But snippets, fragments, jottings coalesced without my noticing… into what I would be writing about if I could.

Earlier today I accepted that, for whatever reason, at the moment I can’t write. I have the ideas but not the capacity to create anything from them. I was explaining this in a reply to Margaret at From Pyrenees to Pennines.

Margaret, thankfully, is much more prolific and consistent than I am. Among other posts on her blog, she provides a one-word stimulus every Tuesday here at Ragtag Daily Prompts. She has provided three so far, each one chiming absolutely with things I want to capture. Every week I want to respond – it just doesn’t happen. And I was explaining this to Margaret in a comment on her latest post. Until I realised that without thinking about it, I was writing what’s been eluding me these past weeks. Continue reading “The View from Here: when the words don’t come”

The View from Here: on an afternoon in April

The view from here on this soft and mellow April afternoon has been filled with small and simple joys

We have sunshine. I took a longer walk than usual, striding along the top road with the warm wind in my hair, skylarks singing in the heavens and solitary seagulls hanging at jaunty angles against the clear blue sky. I checked the wires for newcomers. The wires were empty. Soon, I thought.

Soon. Continue reading “The View from Here: on an afternoon in April”

The View from Here: it doesn’t snow in Cornwall

The view from here was obliterated by a maelstrom of angry swirling snowflakes blurred into a blinding curtain. It fell across the garden and the trees in the valley and very quickly the horizon was gone.

For a couple of weeks I had been musing on a nature/weather-related post based around the vagaries of the British weather. We Brits do love to talk about our weather! Continue reading “The View from Here: it doesn’t snow in Cornwall”