Postcard - No 5
8 March 2024 - the trees in the pondweed
Hello dear readers… this is a flying visit to welcome new subscribers aplenty with love and gratitude! Thank you for being here, thank you for sharing your precious moments of time with me, I know they are few.
For those of you who have just arrived these postcards fill my gaps. That is to say gaps in thought and gaps when I haven’t finished writing the letter I had planned to send. In the case of this week, that is in fact three letters… they aren’t long but the words aren’t flowing. Huge gaping thought gaps.
I’ll get there - if ever I am still for long enough in a quiet place with my own thoughts.
While you wait for that moment to arrive here are a few random notes I made during this first wild week of March.
Random things…
Winter is dragging on, March has been swept up amidst an unpardonably cold wind and enough rain to fill the valley.
My face belies my smile, I am so over winter!
Blossom, is filling the lanes, the sky and then flying in the wind, a carnival of alabaster flakes swirl obliviously. A magical sight verging on fantasy that pauses my steps.
A river of water, resembling an overturned tanker of cold tea, has run through the courtyard and off to whichever field isn’t already too waterlogged to contain it, all of which we should be collecting in our cistern.
The guttering is six meters and a downspout away from being finished and six meters and a downspout away from the cistern. Work will resume when the rain stops - vicious circle comes to mind!
For the first time since December I have walked the dog twice a day in daylight.
Mallard ducks are mating near the pond. I walk down five times, find a quiet, secret place to sit and wait for the ducks to appear. They remain obstinately hidden in what ever reed bed they are making their nest in. While I wait a heron, six buzzard(s)—I’m never sure if there is a plural of the word buzzard—and countless pigeon fly over.
I search for frogspawn instead. Find several, black spotted, quivering clumps happily gestating beneath overhanging banks of bright green fern. I hope the heron hasn’t spotted it too.
I hear stag barking from deep within the forest, warning, defining, protecting.
I take only one photograph—on my phone—all week (above) that I don’t delete. I immediately want to paint it.
“I would like to paint the way a bird sings.”
― Claude Monet
It is quite possible that I will not stir very far from the warmth of my kitchen this weekend.
I have been reading
’s brilliantly written serialised memoir on Only Connect, the link below is for the first chapter… I’m hooked!
I rediscovered Nils Udo’s beautiful art thanks to
’s last two wonderfully researched and interesting posts on the same subject:
Happy weekend lovely ones,
Thank you Susie. You write so vividly; I can picture your scenes easily. It is a pleasure to walk through your week with you. Similar views and feelings here all week as shutters were opened and closed against the relentless rain storms. I’m obsessed with a pea hen who has recently appeared in our garden. We have named her Penelope. She hoovers all the seeds which fall from the bird feeders. We’ve hung some balls of fat from our fig tree over a branch she can easily perch on and snack to her and my heart’s delight. En route vers le Printemps🤞
This week, our rain has stopped, for now. But it has been as you describe. Waterlogged... Happy weekend to you!