All that damp green earth beauty...and Cobwebs and Mist

It's been ages since I last wrote a blog and I don't know where to start - all the things, the thoughts, the feelings that occurred and didn't occur during those days and hours have passed now. So I will start with today. And I'll post a few extra photo blogs of the last weeks as well.

The storm last night - the thunder and a long display of flashing sheet lightning disturbed my sleep. As  well as the awfulness of Boris being elected as PM.

 But I'm still on my early morning walk by 7am. Since I stopped blogging late at night I now walk the circle of ancient lane and field footpath, farm track and village tarmac. It takes me about an hour if I stop to take photos and stand still in wonder  - breathing in the view, the silence, the tiny changes around me since yesterday. 

I rarely encounter another soul. It's nearly always just me alone with the sky and the hedgerows and all that green damp earth beauty.

 I know it's restoring me somehow. From the inside out. 

A  camouflaged meadow brown butterfly at my feet....

and so delicate in the bearded barley, flashing her hint of inside wing orange. 

I see very  little litter on my way - except  this beer bottle today.   Every so often I take a bag with me and collect bottles and sweet wrappers and bits of old plastic rope and cigarette packets and bring them back to put in my re-cycling bin.

  

A recent hoard.

Cows, cud-chewing,  on the other side of the hedge. I always hear them before I see them, snuffling, rubbing up against a panel of corrugated iron.

One morning recently I was followed the whole way by the mournful calling from cows inside a barn across the valley. Mothers calling for their babies taken away.

And the baaa-ing sound of  the sheep calling across the field to each other - young ones,  lost, mother-calling - accompanies me as I walk back down into the village....

I always stop to wave to the three horses on the farm...who just look at me curiously. I love them.

I usually see a pussy cat in the fishing lake field....they usually run away.... but today this one was in some sort of territory stand off with 

this one on the other side of the gate, so he didn't move a whisker.

Back home I cut  a small bouquet of flowers and herbs from the garden and leave them on the doorstop of one of my neighbours. It is the first anniversary of her  husband's death.

She calls round later, while I'm watering the front flower bed, to say thank you but that his date is in a few days time. But it doesn't matter -  as I know and she knows -  that the weeks and days leading up to the anniversary are much worse than the actual day. It's 2 years and nine months to the day since Robin died and my heart is still aching sore.

Yesterday my walk was all about the gossamer cradles of cobwebs in field and hedge and the soft mist hiding the early sun.

And my first wee wren - I heard it before I saw it...never been able to capture it on camera before  - wrens are so darting swift - so I 'm thrilled.

A cloud of sparrows always swoop into the hedge lining the footpath into the village when I approach and its the first time one has stayed still enough for a few seconds for me to get a photo....thrilled again.

He's sleeping ....the click of my camera doesn't disturb him.

 More filigree cobwebs adorning this  calla lily in the newly planted flower bed in the front garden. I  wanted to bring some colour to the approach to the front door. Even temporarily ...as the bed will disappear next year in my plans to widen the drive.  But it brings me joy in the moment.

PS. A message for B in case you read this.

I've tried to comment on your blog many times and sorry I can't get it to work. I so enjoyed the last 2 chapters of your novel - and totally understand why you are carrying on off-blog. Good luck with it all - it is a gem.