February is the cruellest month

T S Eliot in The Waste Land says that April is the cruellest month and I’ve always agreed with him, finding the mixture of winter’s torpor and spring’s stirrings almost unbearable at times, particularly when I was in my early twenties and so lost and confused.
 
Then I met Frog and for forty-four years he propped me up. Now I’m on my own again and returning to that difficult time, learning all the lessons that I didn’t learn then.
 
Yesterday I took refuge in My Secret Wood. I haven’t been there for a while because it’s dark and damp over the winter. I had one of my migraines and couldn’t manage any of my usual prayers and affirmations and spiritual musings. So I just sat there, on the ground, and Ellie sat with me, twitching her nose. Luckily, now she’s twelve and a half, she doesn’t need to rush around all the time.
 
The first bluebell leaves were pushing through and I realised that it’s now February that’s cruel. With climate change, spring starts two months earlier. And, with the start of spring, comes the conflict between old and new.

I know from experience that I feel closest to Frog when I accept - even welcome - my current circumstances and the fact that he's gone to another place, wherever and whatever it is. But it's hard to let go of my grief. It's almost like an illness that has to run its course.

People say that the grief never goes. Instead, you build a new life around it; you get better at dealing with it.

Spring comes in fits and starts, and so does recovery, I suppose.

My Secret Wood

The first bluebell leaves on the floor of My Secret Wood

What I noticed

 Here is what I noticed on my walk this afternoon.

The entrance to a gnome house?

Another little house, which lives in . . .

. . . this self-sufficiency village 

What a poet friend once called a 'selvedge' of light on the horizon

One of the many celandines that have started popping up in the last week. Welcome to you all, oh harbingers of spring!

I also noticed a hawthorn tree covered in leaf shoots and my favourite acid yellow lichen, but it was right at the beginning of the walk and I didn't think it was important to photograph them because I didn't yet have the idea for this post. It turned out that I should have. Let that be a lesson to me to listen to my instincts.

So much beauty

Even though this is a tough time of year, there’s still so much beauty to be found – and especially so with the recent fine weather.

  
Here (below) is a magnificent oak. I love tree skeletons just as much as trees in full leaf, if not more so. 

(As so often, my world is tilted. Usually I correct the pictures, but I didn't notice this one until I'd uploaded it and now I can't be bothered to change it.)

I adore the bluey greys of this view. They make me want to be a watercolourist – but I had fun nonetheless with my new smartphone camera trying to capture the exact shade of light and dark as I saw it (as advised by Carol of Life of Pottering).

For some reason these distant hills remind me of Lord of the Rings, and the little hobbits trudging through vast swathes of wild countryside. I think it’s because Frog had a Tolkien map or perhaps some pictures that looked like this – I must try and find it/them.|

 

This is My Secret Wood from the outside – a glorious multi-hued tangle, soon to burst with new life.

This is the road that meanders along the ridge of the hill behind the house. Round every corner is a fabulous view. Here are the three beech trees in a line that I’ve mentioned before.

And, just in case you think that winter is a drab time, here is some lichen that leapt out of the hedge at me in a psychedelic way.

A halo of light?

In the previous post, I said that even grey days have their charm. Here is some proof from yesterday which was both frosty and foggy. 
 
In the vineyard

This is the field behind the house, used in part as a vineyard farmed organically – hence the lovely long grass.

 
To my eye this scene was much whiter and more wintry than it appears in the picture, but that may just be my eyes. After all, the camera is much younger than I am.
 

 
On top of the hill

Here I am on top of the hill behind the house where three beech trees stand in a line, perhaps the remains of a hedge. This is two of them. 

 

Am I dreaming or is there a halo of light around both trees?

It's interesting that the pictures have come out in different colours. In the first one I'm facing west and in the second north. In this case the camera is more sensitive than I am, because I hadn't noticed any difference.

Wild and free

The sky
 
One place that’s still (mostly) wild and free is the sky. It’s never the same twice and always beautiful and inspiring. (Even grey days have their charm!)
 
Here are some pictures I took yesterday.

I’ve always known these long thin strands of cloud as ‘angel hair’. I thought that was their official name but a quick Google reveals that Joni Mitchell used the phrase in the song ‘Both sides now’ (1967). Whether she was the first, I don’t know. It’s a lovely description, anyway.

 

Last night’s sunset with a just-past-new moon (new last Saturday) and Venus.

 
 
Right to roam
 
Talking of wild and free, I’ve recently signed up for the campaign Right to Roam started by Nick Hayes (author of The Book of Trespass) and Guy Shrubsole (author of Who Owns England?). I’ve read the first book but not the second (yet).

 
They present the shocking fact that we are banned from 92% of England’s countryside and 97% of its rivers, which is wrong on so many counts that I won’t even get started (for the moment).
 
Although since Frog died just over a year ago I haven’t watched or listened to The News (as it’s called – although to my mind most of it is slanted scaremongering Olds), I believe there’s been a recent protest on Dartmoor when a new landowner banned wild camping (or ‘camping’ as we used to call it before there was such a thing as non-wild camping).
 
Thank goodness for people like Nick and Guy.

Ellie

And here, just for fun, is my angel. She's very wild and free (even though she pretends otherwise).