The sun is brilliant in the sky

"The sun is brilliant in the sky but its warmth does not reach my face.
The breeze stirs the trees but leaves my hair unmoved.
The cooling rain will feed the grass but will not slake my thirst.
It is all inches away but further from me than my dreams."
-  M. Romeo LaFlamme, The First of March

I was going to call this post 'Four Seasons in one day' as last Friday was a typical changeable March day.  The morning started bright and sunny and breezy with an intensely clear and blue sky.  Then the snow started, which turned into hail, then sleet.  Then the sun appeared, then the rain started.  The problem with calling my post that is that I only have pictures of how beautiful and sunny and clear it was first thing!  

Hawthorn

March was always seen as the new year rather than January and you can see why.  Even though the weather is still cold, the days are longer and the sun is brighter and warmer.  The daffodils are coming out, and the smallest of buds are appearing on the bushes and trees.

Lilac

Early flowering shrubs like Forsythia are starting to bloom and the catkins are forming on the hazel trees.

 

The birds are starting to make a lot more noise too.  The blackbirds who fed companionably together on the lawn all winter are now competing for food and space.  The woodpigeons always squabbled and argued with each other of course!

  

We haven't reached spring of course, but winter is starting to come to an end.  By the end of March we will have a number of flowers in the garden and everything slowly starts to green.

The cherry plum is already flowering.  I hope we get more fruit this year.

The beautiful hellebore glowing in the sunshine.  There isn't much else flowering yet in our garden.

"March is a month of considerable frustration -
it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country
the weather is still so violent and changeable
that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away."
-  Thalassa Cruso 

Space to spread my mind out in

Hazel Cottage isn't a large house by any stretch of the imagination.  However we do have a spare room where a couple of years ago we added a plain sturdy table in front of the window so I can have a space to create.  My sewing machine sits there and my paint brushes and pencils share pot space with sewing scissors and pinking shears.  Nearby are paints and a basket filled with bits of material for future project.  Sat on the desk too is Hopeful Bear, an old bear I bought a few years back from Fading Grace.

I love the fact that I have somewhere to paint, sew and write.  Somewhere Virginia Woolf called 'Space to spread my mind out in'.  Any projects I'm in the middle of can sit on the table and are safe until I come back. 

Sometimes I just like sitting at my table and look out the window which overlooks the back garden and watch the birds in the trees.  Even when I don't have time to do anything creative, I like to come and stand in the room and I just feel calmer. 

 

'I feel so intensely the delights of shutting oneself up

in a little world of one's own,

with pictures and music and everything beautiful'

Virginia Woolf

Muffins and hearts

Some weekends are just 'making' weekends.  Mr C was out on Saturday morning and I had a quiet morning listening to Radio 4 and making banana and chocolate chip muffins.  There is something so wonderful and British and precious about Radio 4.     You could be listening to a play or learning about culture or a very silly comedy.

As I made the muffins  I listened to the Reverend Richard Coles and friends on Saturday Live.  It almost felt as if it could be any time in the last 50 years or so!

Our mixing bowl is an old Mason Cash one we had found in a charity shop a few years back.

The muffins were quite nice in the end, I wasn't sure the banana I used was mushy enough though. 

On Sunday we cooked a wonderful recipe of stuffed lambs hearts.  It was a bit fiddly as you have to make the stuffing (onions, sausage meat, mushrooms, parsley garlic), then a sauce made with tinned tomatoes, red wine, flour and butter, then stuff the hearts, wrap them in bacon and tie them up with string, then cook for about two hours.  It was worth it though, they were lovely! 

Offal never looks pretty, but it makes up for this with the wonderful flavour.  I do find that these days a lot of people are very squeamish about using heart, liver or kidney, many people are even flummoxed by any meat on the bone that isn't vacuum packed and bloodless!  I do think they are missing out though.

Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue

My blog today was inspired by two entirely separate things, firstly a walk we had last weekend and secondly reading Jane's great blog The life of an eccentric English booklady where she shared some wonderful 19th century advice on improving lowness of spirits.  One of the suggestions for improving mood was to 'Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue'.    I must admit that even spending time in our garden in sunshine this afternoon, listening to the birds and seeing what is happening outside did make me very happy.  My hands are scratched by brambles and we barely scratched the surface of all the work there is to do, but just being outside was so lovely.

Last weekend we went for a walk which took in both farmland and woodland so I thought I'd share some of the pictures I took.

The ducks enjoying the new pond created by incessant rain

Sodden fields

Looking across a valley filled with beech and birch trees

Muddy banks of the river.  We saw a pair of dippers dancing in and out of the water

Beech trees and much lichen

Ferns growing out of moss and lichen on a tree

Ferns haven't really died back from last year.

The sheep were quite muddy in their field

Very free range chickens

Hedgerow not looking quite right for winter

The holly bush, a sober lump of green,
Shines through the leafless shrubs all brown and grey,
And smiles at winter be it eer so keen
With all the leafy luxury of May.
And O it is delicious, when the day
In winter's loaded garment keenly blows
And turns her back on sudden falling snows,
To go where gravel pathways creep between
Arches of evergreen that scarce let through
A single feather of the driving storm;
And in the bitterest day that ever blew
The walk will find some places still and warm
Where dead leaves rustle sweet and give alarm
To little birds that flirt and start away.
John Clare - Winter Walk

King Winter is now in the land

We are very lucky here and haven't suffered from any flooding.  It does feel however that we've had rain most days since before Christmas.  Until recently we haven't really had much of a winter, the odd warm weather has made it feel like a perennial autumn.  Then suddenly winter has arrived and we are getting frosts and sunny days.

 

So in order to make the best of the beautiful wintry weather, we set off early for a walk on the South Downs this morning.

 

 

The frost covered everything, and glittered and shone, even the grass was tinted with silver and white.

We walked through beech tree avenues, and across farmland where only recently deep ridges of mud would have made it difficult to walk through.  Now they are frozen hard with puddles now sheets of ice.

There was a lovely light through the trees, and we saw a number of robins, finches and blackbirds along the way and possibly a bird of prey far into the distance.  We also saw a yellow headed bird which I think was a siskin on the edge of the woodland.

The hedgerow was filled with plenty of berries, often seen to be a sign of a hard winter.  I read recently that it is more a sign of a warm autumn, so I'm not sure what is true now!

The walk has made me feel quite enthused about perhaps doing more painting although trying to recreate the frost and ice is somewhat beyond my talents...

 

‘King Winter is now in the land.

He reigns with cold and freezing hand.

He makes Jack Frost touch nose and toe,

and brings us bright and shiny snow.

M. Meyerkort

A New Year and a New Project!

It may be having all this time off, but I've been really very creative lately.  I started making a patchwork star the other day as it is almost Epiphany.  I had no real notion of what I would be doing with it...

I then started painting a very small acrylic picture of Charleston House in East Sussex.  I always sketch in first so I have an idea of what I'm doing.  It was based on a photo I took during the Autumn when we popped in on our way home from Rye.  It isn't perfect but I was happy with it as I haven't painted for a little while and the size of the canvas was rather small!

 

I was still keen to do something creative, and thought about Mr C saying to me about making a patchwork quilt.  So I got out a huge pile of materials, made a lot of mess then had an idea about using bits and pieces of unused material to make a patch with applique in the middle.

 

 

Above is the background, which I've used a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine.  I will then hand sew some embroidered flowers from badly stained old linen onto the top of that.  I can't embroider myself, but I like the idea of reusing something that was made years ago.

 

 

This will then make the second patch.  I expect the quilt will take about 25 years to complete, but I like the idea of doing a patch at a time and seeing where it takes me.  Wish me luck!

 

I can't quite believe it is January already and we only have three more days of the Christmas season.  Work is looming again on Monday, but I'm trying not to think about it too much.

 

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain.

The Other days of Christmas...

Today is the day that everyone asks that annoying question.  'Did you have a good Christmas?' they enquire and my answer is always to state that it is still Christmas!  To a large number of people in this country, Christmas starts when the shops start advertising their wares (if you are lucky in November), and ends with Boxing Day.  Many people are busy taking down Christmas trees, stripping their house of all decoration, moaning about having too much food leftover.

Whilst I understand the need for businesses to start Christmas early, I don't understand the need to start Christmas celebrations a month in advance.  Before you think I am being rather humbug, it isn't that I don't love Christmas, I really do.  I love all the preparation, the making of the mincemeat, the hanging of the holly and ivy, the choosing and wrapping presents and writing cards.  What I don't like is this long pre Christmas hysteria followed by a cutting short of the Christmas season.  For it IS a season.  Christmas starts on Christmas Eve and runs until Twelfth Night.  In some traditions it even lasts as long as Candlemas on the 2nd of February.

I'm a great believer in Thoreau's saying that we should 'Live in each season as it passes'.  Enjoy the beginnings of Autumn and the leaves changing colour, then celebrate Halloween, Bonfire Night, Stir Up Sunday and so on.  If we rush onto the next thing too quickly, we do not savour what is happening at that moment.  Rather than spending the whole of the Autumn celebrating Christmas, leave Christmas to its proper time at the end of the year, at the darkest time of the year.

I do understand that a lot of people don't work in the same industry that means they can take time off between Christmas and New Year, but even those who have to return to work can have those days brightened by coming home to a lovely tree with its sparkling lights or a candle burning.

Thank you for your messages on my Christmas Day message, I do hope that you are able to enjoy the other days of Christmas too.  We are only on the third day of Christmas now, many days left to celebrate the light in the darkness.

 

“A good time occurs precisely when we lose track of what time it is.”  

Robert Farrar Capon