A gift from the Frost Spirit

The first frost was late this year. In early September the temperature dropped to the mid-teens (about 60F) and stayed there. The leaves hung half-fallen from the trees, the grass kept growing and the medlars fattened. Yesterday we finally had the first frost. As is the way of things, a frosty night usually means a brilliant winter morning and we were rewarded with a beautiful sunlit frost pattern across the skylights. Welcome, Winter. We have prepared your place in the garden. Be good now.

A curious state of affairs

Yesterday there was a full moon on the horizon, just as dawn broke, sitting on top of the long wall of the levees - not that we call them that here. Driving along, if I could have stopped, I could have placed any one of a dozen shapely bushes against its bright white face. Closer to work, stuck in traffic, the moon placed itself in perfect composition with a distant copse. By contrast, the previous morning, I had driven into the face of an angry sky. The clouds had been ripped into a crowd of small, black, ragged faces, all shouting down at the world. Behind the sky was changing from black to a strong but pale blue. Once, it occured to me, I would have described the colours in the sky in angry terms. Today I saw a grain of blues which reminded me of an old doorway, where layers of different blues had all worn away in runs and lines and blisters of paint. It called to mind, in the oddest way, a memory of a page in a school journal, with ink of one shade of blue fading, to be replaced suddenly by a richer, deeper, but different shade of blue, and a teachers words in blue biro against the margin. It called to mind the changing, rippling shades of blue on a boat in a remote fjiord as the sky faded, just as this one was coming to life.

Where did it come from, this shift in the source of words for colour.

January

A still day in mid January between two storms. It is the late afternoon and the sun is low. The trees have been brushed clean by rain and wind. They are illuminated by yellow light but by some trick of the day, it is the contrast which shines. Perhaps it's the dark clouds in layers on the northern horizon, grey and blue, with all shades of blue down to the horizon. The trees look like pen and ink drawings, every branch stark. Every building on the low hills rolling up to the clouds are outlinked in black ink against the glow. Not golden, not buttery, but yellow like a pale sun, or sere, or gentle the colour of fawns, which is no surprise. Every hedge is outlined and there, hiding low, there are some greens. Between the bands of clouds there are white clouds which are turning from the colour of wool scraps on a barbed wire fence, to textured warm yellows and tints of rose as the sun dies. At home we have watercolours, gifts from a relative, which capture exactly this.

Even in midwinter, England can be beautiful.