Joys of Winter

Zephrine A sigh of starlings - a wonderful sight.

Just watching a flock of about 2 thousand starling swirling around, dividing and regrouping. As they fly overhead it sounds like a sigh - amazing! (just as long as they don't settle in my garden)

Movement and depth bagitha, a bit special . Would love to have watched that this afternoon.

The actual picture is marvellous too! And at ten to five there is still light in the sky! Yay!

bagitha Your second word picture is marvellous

bagitha My husband is asthmatic - uses two inhalers. During our time in Cornwall, we purchased a derelict barn. He spent an entire day sweeping debris, including rat droppings, in readiness for building work. My goodness, how he SUFFERED. Ultimately said barn morphed into a beautiful wee cottage.
jeni for the beautiful poem.

The low winter afternoon sun
Zaps through a gap in the hills
And lights on windows over the loch.
They reflect it onto the dark
Shadows of the hills in water
Where it is diffused
In a blurred orange slash
Until cut through by the wake
Of a tug going home to port.
The waves of tug wash
(Pugwash at the helm nae doot!)
Arrive in white curls
At the mussel shells on shore,
The beach banks of which
The recent storm surging tides
Have deepened to thick beds
Of millions upon millions.

The guessers are right! It's rather fun game, butty; let's do it again another day.

Yes, thank you, super, so far so good (enough) today. Maybe it was the hedge dust yesterday. I never know as half the time it's exercise-induced, and sometimes just a change in atmospheric pressure is enough to set things off. Crazy.

Hardy is very good - if you're already in the mood for suicide.

annobel ah! Hardy. Now I know who by i can look it up haven't read it since I was 12. I used to write poetry but haven't for years, perhaps it's something I should try again? Thanks annobel

Very 'modish' bags

Ah, bagitha, nothing beats invigorating cool air with a lovely drop of sunshine. Enough to put anyone in the 'mode' for poetry?

Am I right?

One of my favourite poems, jeni
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres

I might be in a minority but I like Hardy's poetry. Wish I had the vision to write like that! Or like super and bags and butter, for that matter.

Bagitha I haven't that particular poem in my book. But I reckon you reckon right! Are you feeling better? I do not like to hear otherwise x

Does anyone remember poem called (I think) the darkling thrush. I think it has a line about" bindweed scores the darkening sky?"

Bags, your energy astounds me! Hope you are none the worse for your exertions.

super, what a lovely little picture of the heron. I really like your use of alliteration too. Brilliant!

i 'tink so.
Is that a kind of surreal one-line work of art jingl ?

I was in search mode for a while looking for butty's reference to the sparrows eating bird cherry blossom. Found it on here. We get bullfinches that eat the flower buds off our wild plum tree before they even open. They visit specially for that feast.

super, Ted Hughes's description of thrushes hunting (in the eponymous poem) always reminds me of herons too, and so herons always remind me of thrushes.

Is that usage of eponymous correct?

Butter Nothing seems to stress a heron

That's lovely, supernana - cool and refreshing with a chilled-out heron.

bagitha Reading your amazing word picture tired me out. You certainly are made of stern stuff...

A heron stands statue-still
On the shell scattered shore -
Rooted by his reflection
It scans the pebbled pool.
The sea is baby blue
Barely a ruffle or ripple to
Scar it's perfect calm.

The sun is sex lovely today.

Wrestled with a double ladder
Trying to separate the two bits
Because I only needed one.
Gave up and hauled another down
So I could adjust the 'mode' —
That's the time on the clock
To you and me! —
On our outdoor max/min thermometer
Which was resetting twelve hours out
And is out of reach but more sheltered
Than the last one which, though waterproof
(they said), let in water.
It was hurricane water — penetrating.
Thought I might need a ladder to rescue a hen
Stuck in a tree, but she unstuck herself.
Then I went to build my compost fence.
Started small, two or three metres in length,
Half a metre high. It's only to hold in
More compost!
Stuffed it with dead gorse,
Rowan twigs blown off in
That gale (or several!),
And fern that has flopped
And looks messy.
My joints and my chest ache a bit now,
As they do,
But that Sun and that Air
Was glorious.

Absolutely! I spent yesterday morning cutting back the raspberry canes SO I do not practise what I preach and I do get on with it too! Daily Seretide keeps my asthma under control but the asthma nurse freaks at my peak/flow. I, on the other hand, have long decided that we cannot all be the same and that my levels are 'normal' for me!
One thing I did have to give up was hockey, while I was at College many years ago, as running around in the afternoon guaranteed I would wheeze all night.... not good when you are trying to impress a BF!!!!