Unexpected Sun

Up the track in winter

Its been glorious today, and I couldn't help myself - I had to get out in it.  All this sitting about doing forced resting is so frustrating.  So I tidied the back yard up a bit (mounds of leaves left over from the autumn so I am doing it a bit at a time), put some washing out, and then sat on the bench in the front garden, basking in the sunshine.  Its not warm here by any means, 6 degrees at most, but in the sun and sheltered from the chilly wind, when you are wrapped up in fleeces, its very nice.  I could see my breath but I didn't care. 

I sat there listening to the birds singing.  Our resident robin and one of the bolshie bull finches from the woods were having a singing fight on the laburnum tree.  The lawn is full of daisies and a shiny new bee was visiting them in a lazy fashion.  I sat very still and he came and drank from the four daisies between my shoes, so close I could see how silvery his wings were, and the brilliant gloss on his head. 

There are lots of dead leaves in the front garden too, and I spent some time studying one or two.  If anything, I think they are even more beautiful at this time of year, when the frost and snow has dried them out sufficiently to see the stalkiness of the central veins and the fretwork of branches threading out to their curled edges.  If you hold them up to the sun, you can still see the rich gold and rust of autumn trapped inside, but the cold weather has also given them a lovely silver sheen.

I kept thinking I should be taking photos or drawing.  But sometimes, you just have to be, to appreciate what is around you, and try to let go of the endless desire to preserve things in digital aspic.  So I don't have a beautiful photograph of the bee or the leaf, which probably would not have done them justice anyway.  I just have the memory.  And memory will have to be enough.