This is my first venture into book publishing other than on a one-off basis. Field Studies is my tribute to our farmers and their influence on the landscape. Taking photos of arable and grassland fields was a project I started more than 20 years ago, and which still…
Category: words
Today’s word of interest is “Dunkelflaute“, formed by combining “Dunkelheit” (darkness) and “Windflaute” (little wind) to describe heavy overcast skies and light wind conditions. As you may have noticed, UK weather has been in this condition for a number of days now – in meteorological parlance, an anticyclonic…
This year, our Egremont Russet apple tree was laden with apples despite the hot dry summer. For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been eating windfalls, but recent winds and the inevitable abscission process have meant that they are dropping in significant numbers, so today I hauled out…
Every time we drive to Bath, I spot an old rust-stained fingerpost pointing down a country lane to White Ox Mead. One of those white cast iron signs with raised black capital lettering. And I muse on the fact that once upon a time in the dim and…
I’ve just returned from a short stroll down our lane in the cool of the evening, to see the glorious harvest moon rising from behind the trees over a pale shimmering field of oats. Like a ripe apricot as it first appeared, and surrounded by a faint halo…
Like yesterday, today began dull and misty, the low cloud blowing from the sea, and the oat fields shading from dusty golden yellow to grey as they vanished into the distance. Spattering mizzle (mist and drizzle combined) released a long-forgotten scent of damp vegetation, after months of dry…
(With apologies to H E Bates for traducing the title of his much-loved novel!) I’ve just returned from a long weekend in Bude, North Cornwall. We were blessed with nice spring weather most of the time, and made the most of the opportunity to explore the ravishing coastline…
Most of my posts are on a particular theme, but it occurred to me, as I wandered around my nearest town – Lyme Regis – that despite having done the same several times a week for some years, there were some oddments and visual scraps that defy categorisation,…
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. – William Blake, Auguries of Innocence In my rather small lockdown world, a walk on the beach at low tide…