This gallery contains 50 photos.
One of the constant themes in the garden here is the ever-changing weather that we can experience in the same month, and from year to year. So no surprise that after one of the sunniest and driest Februarys, March should … Continue reading
This gallery contains 46 photos.
“How are you?” was the familiar greeting down the line. “I’m feeling glum. I’ve just read your email and poem”, was my unusual reply. This the response to our younger son, after a brief email he’d sent me which included … Continue reading
This gallery contains 71 photos.
2023 for us began splendidly – house guests again, at last, over at least some of the twelve nights of Christmas. Conversation, reminiscing, walks, special food, and some favourite films including a much-anticipated second watch of Stephen Macrae and Sarah … Continue reading
This gallery contains 36 photos.
It had to happen. 2 weeks of wonderful freezing cold, but largely dry weather ended and the last 10 days have seen mild temperatures, wind, and winter rains return. Along with the added disappointment of a cancelled family visit, due … Continue reading
This gallery contains 89 photos.
Will you read to the end? Who is this really for? You or me? Do I know? Do I care? A selection of short sentences to begin, since I’ve been thinking about attention spans of late. Probably prompted by my … Continue reading
This gallery contains 73 photos.
I shall forever remember the recent wolf moon. I’ve certainly seen one before, though without knowing that the full moon in January was given this, and several other monikers centuries ago, at least in the U.S.A., by native American tribes. … Continue reading
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No fanfare greets your late return, No chattered dipped inflections, No yearned for sunny silhouettes. No, November’s solitary influx Seeps, a secret spreading stain. A million marvel migrants fled. The chilling landscape, flushed you Fast, by night. Alone. And tracked … Continue reading
This gallery contains 93 photos.
Three questions to begin. Do you like the header image, which is completely untweaked? It’s exactly as it came out of the camera’s flash card. Secondly do you prefer it this way up? And finally, and really the most interesting, … Continue reading
This gallery contains 9 photos.
At last, November 2nd, a dense grey scene greeted me as I drew the upstairs bedroom curtains. But not without hope, as it had the faintest hint of colour seeping through, due East. As always, the next job in my … Continue reading
This gallery contains 32 photos.
Let’s get the plurality of falls out of the way. I’m stretching the meaning to include what we still seem to call autumn, on this side of the pond, though fall is an appropriate term on a day like today … Continue reading
This gallery contains 6 photos.
My last post was rushed out before a frantic but delightful weekend, when our son’s family and 6 grandchildren descended, overlapping with a pre-planned NGS pop-up weekend. This was promoted as part of a BBC Radio 2 event, “The Big … Continue reading
This gallery contains 94 photos.
The weather has continued to be a dominant factor in life here over the last 4 weeks. Culminating this last week in what I can only describe as brutal conditions for several days. However, to rewind, named storm Christoff, battered … Continue reading
This gallery contains 34 photos.
What a strange Christmas this year. No physical visitors, but a wonderful, across the globe, multifamily, multigenerational, even multi continent, ZOOM call. In Wales, a recent apparent surge in Covid case numbers, the discovery of a new “mutant” and “more … Continue reading
This gallery contains 12 photos.
Dream Leaper What a time it was, When beeches wept and Seasons’ memories lay neatly banked and rusting, Deep beneath Caermalwas Fach’s Cathedral sheltering boughs. It was a time For Crow to crown the naked larch And, silhouetted, … Continue reading
This gallery contains 75 photos.
I can’t recall a year like this. Never mind the “pandemic”, I’m referring to our lovely Oak tree, draped over the barn roof. (The valleys though, aren’t singing. Locked down again, for 17 days from Friday. So listen instead to … Continue reading
This gallery contains 132 photos.
With apologies to The Eagles, “Life in the slow stream, Surely gonna ease your soul” seems a suitable line to begin a post typically full of the observations that always happen down here when the weather is wonderful. And DRY! … Continue reading
This gallery contains 40 photos.
Monday March 16th dawned clear, cold with a light frost, and sunny for a good couple of hours. Thrushes were serenading, small feathers drifted across the yard, as house sparrows and wagtails built nests. By 9.30 honeybees were visiting the … Continue reading
This gallery contains 38 photos.
A fortnight ago, we headed down to the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) for their annual Wales Fungus day event. In spite of a poor forecast, as always there were several interesting talks and events laid on, including their … Continue reading
This gallery contains 5 photos.
September Today I yearn serenity. And on this first morn, Shorn of politics and prorogation, September smiles. Struggling through horizoned clouds, A window opens; golden light floods Distant Pumsaint’s rich veined coum. The hidden … Continue reading
This gallery contains 57 photos.
What halcyon days, the August 2019 bank holiday weekend. A record breaker for temperatures across the UK, and here too with heat and wall to wall sunshine. Yet what of the origin of “halcyon days”? You have to return to … Continue reading
This gallery contains 46 photos.
Just in time for a bit of planned guerilla planting, or more accurately sowing, our eldest son and fiancée arrived at the end of the first week in June. Following the wettest day in 3 months, a quick trawl beneath … Continue reading
This gallery contains 60 photos.
Was it the full moon? Or the sudden warming in temperatures last week? Or impending Easter – which won’t fall this late in April again until 2030? Or the threat of predators? At that stage unseen.We’ll never know, but after … Continue reading
This gallery contains 19 photos.
Seizing the moment on a currently rare March morning, forecast to be dry and sunny after much rain, cloud and wind during the first fortnight of this highly variable month, Fiona had plotted a circular route centred around the coastal … Continue reading
This gallery contains 44 photos.
It’s only mid January, and already I’m thinking about next year’s bulb order. Significant numbers of larger bulbs aren’t going to be on it, maybe just a few Narcissus ‘Rjinveld’s Early Sensation’ but certainly lots more of those smaller gems which … Continue reading
This gallery contains 18 photos.
Pictures? Or Words? Another Day Saturday morning, before Today begins. Warm, still, silent. Up here. Crow crudely cracks the soundscape open. Beetles blurrrr West. Blushing pink flushes swiftly gold. And valleys haze. So calm, so calm. … Continue reading
This gallery contains 55 photos.
Naked ladies, Devil’s paintbrush, Brimstone, Mosquito hawks, Hordes of toads, Erupting craneflies, Dandelion diversity. The list of interesting observations here in the last 10 days has certainly kept my eyes wide open, and my shutter finger twitchy. But I’ll begin … Continue reading
This gallery contains 24 photos.
This week, the evening after we’d decided we could relax and leave our last single lambs outside for the night, I had my usual pre-bathtime use of the watering can outside the back door. The lambs have done very well … Continue reading
This gallery contains 45 photos.
__________ Lapsed Time Slow down, young lad. Take time to find the gaudy foil wrapped Eggs and rabbits hidden by Those mossy greens. Slow down, young lass. Paint shells and papers, Gaudy bright, but leave the Brows and … Continue reading
This gallery contains 39 photos.
Survival is a common thread here. Trivially, WordPress have just reminded me that I’ve now been writing, and photographing for these posts, for 7 years. I’ve survived for that long. This surprised me – that on one level I’m still … Continue reading
This gallery contains 20 photos.
Eruption Long before the golden blue-grey Tints hint breaking skies, and Sun, once more. Howling Easterlies rake the facing slopes. With poached mud, frozen. Hard. Some time before the landing Creyr, wings folded in, Took patient station on the … Continue reading
This gallery contains 15 photos.
A complex world. Simplicity seems best. Up or down, Or left or right, Bright eye, sharp ear, Synapsed with necessary fear. An open place, to think and preen. Quickly, though, lest eyes unseen Home in and plan a swift … Continue reading
This gallery contains 85 photos.
The New Year began with snowdrops aplenty, but as I mentioned last time, no warmth for them to spread their petals wide, so a selection was brought inside for a New Year’s Day lunch, along with some snipped Daphne bholua … Continue reading
This gallery contains 85 photos.
How much energy is needed to melt a cubic metre of snow? This question popped into my mind after our previous heavy snowfall here, and whether we’d even manage to escape down our track, and make it to our Christmas … Continue reading
This gallery contains 8 photos.
(The blogger’s nightmare scenario. You spend the best part of a wet day drafting a post, tweaking the title, adding photos, and then, knowing that you need to take a couple more photos in the morning, and with my routines … Continue reading
This gallery contains 70 photos.
Life has exploded this June. It probably happens every June, but maybe weather conditions have concentrated the process this year. And when I say life, I really mean the invertebrates which share our garden and meadows with us. I get … Continue reading
This gallery contains 61 photos.
A definition. In the early C17th, a century before the masons raised the mauve rubblestone walls of St.Edith’s, a wordsmith merged the Latin Ab (off), with Scindere (to cut), to create abscindere, or abscissio, and thence today’s abscission. An action noun, meaning a … Continue reading
This gallery contains 12 photos.
What a week! Or perhaps 10 days. The personal, everyday, seasonal. Interwoven with unique moments of (inter)national and historic gravitas, prompts this very brief post’s personal jottings, before the memories fade. _____________ A Rural View Sheep shorn. Votes cast. Counting … Continue reading
This gallery contains 19 photos.
Perhaps before dawn, As slow warm neck caressing fingers work, Will frost thaw, and words flow, to catch the scene, Too far away to see? Perhaps my wizard’s cloak of birth, absurdly Grey, then fading white, and straddling ancient distant … Continue reading
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Mourning. I can’t be there. In the Place de la Republique, with my candle. Last summer’s bonhomie, and stumbled upon music fest, just a distant memory now. Holed up here on a rain lashed hillside in the Pays de Galles, … Continue reading
This gallery contains 20 photos.
Our recently revealed, wet meadow’s old ditches. Leached out, decades old, decayed detritus. Memories of previous existence. Dusts rainbowed over muddy sludge. Reincarnate, with recent rain. Colours bleed. Animation returns. Dull? As Ditch Water? Death, Or Life?
thegardenimpressionists 