23rd April

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

"It being a beautiful morning we set off at 11 o'clock, intending to stay out of doors all the morning... We determined to go under Nab Scar... The sun shone and we were lazy. ...It was very grand when we looked up, very stone, here and there a budding tree... Looking into the vales, - Ambleside vale, with the copses, the village under the hill, and the green fields, Rydale, with a lake all alive and glittering, yet but little stirred by breezes, and our own dear Grassmere, irst making a little round lake of nature's own, with never a house, never a gren field, but the copses and the bare hills enclosing it, and the river flowing out of it. Above rose the Conniston Fells, in their own shape and colour - not Man's hills, but all for themselves, the sky and the clouds, and a few wild creatures." Dorothy Wordsworth, 1802 (Westmorland)

"Saw the redstart or firetail today and little willow wren. The blackthorn tree in full lower that shines about the hedges like cloaths hung out to dry." John Clare, 1825 (Northants)

"...to Croyland, over misterable peat flats in miserable grey storm, thundrous at once and biting cold, and as black as soot over Croydon bridge as I tried to draw." John Ruskin, 1876 (Lincolnshire)

2009

The sun rose to striped skies today, and all the birds singing, and lambs playing in the fields, and a rabbit on the path.


There was mist in the distance again, a little more than yesterday, creating fairy castles and towers from trees and hedgerows. And as I admired Little Tree and her Green Hedge friend, I noticed that the Big Trees were starting to be touched with life again at last! It's Spring!
Byslantedlight, 2009 (Cambs.)

2010

Another gorgeously blue-skyed day, so that cycling there and back (especially past the jammed traffic *g*) was rather sublime - past blossom, white and pink, and budding leaves and greenery. No spectacular sunset tonight, though the sun is still... diffuse? in the sky.
Byslantedlight, 2010 (Cambs.)