10/02/2008 by admin.

The world has closed in today. There’s no horizon, just a shifting line of grey. And without the big picture you are compelled to study the foreground.

Right at front there’s shallow water, but only the things growing alongside it are still visible. Mist lingers near the river and hangs, low-lying, along the close cropped grass.

Further away, the wood is a tangled mass with two dark green columns of ivy. Conversely, each twig and branch of the ash can be picked out against a pale grey sky and every tip ends in a bud.

In the lane there are sheep on the loose, but the farmer and his lad are already urging them back through the hedge and waving cars to slow down. It’s a cheery business, apparently.

There’s movement in the sky, too: a flock of seagulls heading inland, and a solitary magpie flapping past. I can hear, but not see, the crows. The fog seems to both muffle sound and make you more aware of it.

In the ash, the bluetit with the distinctive punk head feathers is bobbing fiercely alongside the nesting box and asserting, “My tree! My tree! My tree!”

In the ground beneath there are at last green shoots and amongst them, snowdrops.

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22/01/2008 by admin.

There was a sharp frost last night. Today the mill is surrounded by white fields that lead up to a dull, gunmetal sky.

Grass crunches underfoot and you can see every thick, individual strand.

Look east and you’ll be surprised by a mad explosion of colour in the sky. Long, magenta clouds infused with golden light are set against a pale blue backdrop.

This warmth and these contrasts will be gone in moments, so stand by the black gate that glitters in the cold, look up, and listen to the blackbird perched on a telegraph pole.

It’s singing like the first day of hope in a very long illness.

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10/01/2008 by admin.

After a night of wild and windy weather the river is as high and as fast as I have ever seen it.

The water is swollen and muddy and almost at the top of the bank. Steps opposite the old stable lead down into the stream bed. Today, the lowest of these is completely immersed and swirls of white foam push past the rocks and round the trees as the current roars past the house.

It is barely light: the trees are still dark, tangled silhouettes against a pale sky. Yet already there are two squirrels flinging themselves from ash to hazel to ash to alder. With feathery tails held upright they scutter, purposeful and intent, upriver.

The waterfall is a torrent of foam and mud. It plunges and thunders into the millrace and all the debris from the hillside is taken with it.

A storm works its changes here long after the water has fallen from the sky.

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30/12/2007 by admin.

The light is quite extraordinary today.

The top half of the fields is a curved slice of lemon hedged by bright emerald, whilst the bottom remains in deep shadow.

A few sheep linger in the shade.

The same bright sunshine picks out the topmost branches of the two ash trees so that each branching arm and twig is delineated exactly against a pastel sky.

The light of a more ordinary day fails to show up the lined and textured sage green of the bark, which is normally taken for brown. Ivy has climbed only as far as where the branches fork.

Two minutes later and the whole perspective has changed.

Beneath it all, the river runs shallow and cold and quite subdued.

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28/12/2007 by admin.

Green, sodden fields are close-cropped by sheep.

Wind moves the bare, dark branches of trees that drip with rain.

A cold dampness seeps into everything.

Bright, white lights twinkle reflections in the glass.

The last remnants of the day slide towards dusk.

It’s that No Man’s Land of time between Christmas and the New Year.

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