Chinese New Year. The Year of the Snake. The sun is up and I can share fabulous red themed photographs on the blog.
One of my most serendipitous photos was taken a few steps further west from our local tidal pool. One December day I found a man practising his moves overlooking Plymouth Sound.
This seems the perfect day to show off his skills and my good fortune on witnessing this.
May your Wednesday be full of colour and not too many actual snakes.
The normal order of things has arrived in our house out of the normal order.
Bunches of daffodils arrived over the weekend. Normally the first cut flowers of January, they were overtaken by beautiful blowsy tulips who arrived en masse for a birthday just over a week ago.
The weather of this curious winter is doubtless to blame. Tulips come from elsewhere and are grown in controlled greenhouses for the early part of the year. Daffodils come from just down the road and suffer the same weather as I do.
The daffodils in our kitchen probably started life as cut flowers a week or so ago in fields near Penzance. Then travelled in temperature controlled luxury to London, were distributed to Marks and Spencer, where they were purchased and then driven down to us over the weekend.
Normally we can reliably buy daffodils by the roadside from early January . Everything is a little bit late and battered by the storms that keep rolling in. Even snowdrops seem a bit behind their usual schedule.
These clumps of snowdrops are usually much more open to posing for photographs. The green stripes of their underskirts are one of my favourite shades of green.
Flowers in January bring a twinkle to the listless, slightly unfocussed days of mid-January. Arriving out of order is a discombobulating experience. But now the daffodils are in the kitchen and everything should fall into place. Onward to the second half of winter. Bring it on and let’s get it over with.
Happy Gotcha day to Lola. 9 years of being photogenic when she is asleep or dozing.
A woman who lives her most adventurous life when travelling in a camper van with a bed.
I have migrated from the East of England to the West with some long term living in London and the South East. On this map I grew up in pale blue and have lived on both green and dark blue areas. I currently reside on the cusp of red and grey my words for the evening meal have never altered.
Lunch occurs between noon and 2pm.
Tea is almost always just a drink unless it becomes an event with cake and sandwiches and is called afternoon tea. Small children have a late afternoon snack which I could call tea but never do.
A meal after 6 pm is supper unless I am in a restaurant choosing from a ‘dinner’ menu but I would still call it being ‘ out for supper’
All this written before breakfast which seems pretty secure in its identity as the first meal of the day unless it slips rather too close to lunch and becomes brunch. Actually my favourite meal.
One calendar month since Christmas Day. I am very aware that the last vestiges of the festive season are ebbing away. We finished the Christmas cake this week and yesterday I made some very fancy cheese straws from the last of the hard cheeses. We still have some festive lights up to twinkle during the remaining long winter evenings.
I expect my Christmas books and shower products to last until the summer. Christmas chocolates might make it all the way through February or even March. A whole winter’s worth of small treats.
Time shape shifts for me in the winter. 25 Nov to 25 December the days hurtle past,while clocking up a whole month after Christmas has seemed like a slow plod through porridge.
So much for me taking a new attitude to winter. Is it OK to say that I have certainly addressed each day with a positive attitude and that has greatly improved my journey. But winter still lags at the back in my list of favourite seasons. Maybe I should try harder next year or maybe I just shouldn’t worry. In every list there is always a least favourite.
Winter Day at Mountbatten.
Hibernation would suit me very well if I could do it in a snug place with my Christmas Leftovers and my books. Is that too much to ask?
Positive Languishing in a cozy spot. Winterization goals.
Storm Éowyn drove the bobbers indoors. Two intrepid bobbers, bobbed briefly and then joined other bobbers in a warm kitchen for a fabled ‘ dry bob’. Always a joyful gathering full of giddy chattering, crumpets and coffee.
Not that Éowyn caused a huge amount of upset to life on our peninsular. The sea was much too rough for regular bobbing so a dry bob in a kitchen was the very best of plans.
Éowyn may not have caused much local upset but she sent a pre-storm which really kicked a punch.
While not exactly in the eye of the hurricane we spent ten minutes unable to drive or do anything until the hail/thunder and lightening moved on. The pre-storm may also have driven us into a lovely warm café and interiors store. Those particular storm clouds had a gorgeous rustic interior rather than the traditional silver lining.
Storms on the horizon have not been a bad thing at all.
The silky morning of yesterday’s blog bloomed into an entirely gorgeous day.
#1178 theoldmortuary ponders.
We resolved to max out on the apracity of the day and took ourselves to Rame Head for an afternoon of walking and book reading.
Our destination gives me the chance to share a tiny nugget of Cinema trivia. From the film Jaws.
Rame Head is mentioned as one of the first points sailors can name as they sail close to the English shore.
Jaws meets @theoldmortuary on a sunny day.
The road home was not too shabby either.
A silky morning walk with some breaks in the cloud. The quiet chug as the river ferry collects passengers. Just a whole lot more charming now the Greige has lifted. I fear this is a temporary lull. Storm Éowyn has booked herself a place on our coast from tomorrow.
Having never read or watched Game of Thrones I don’t really have an expectation of the name Éowyn. My JR Tolkien reading days are long ago and I have no recollection of his character Éowyn. But it is a really beautiful name so I am hopeful of a storm that does no harm and creates beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Most importantly I would like the winter greige banished for more than a brief moment. For now I am more than happy to accept the silky calm that precedes her.
There has been a touch of tulip mania in our house over the last three days. Bunches of birthday flowers arrived and filled our available vases.
And then a new vase was gifted. A plump pair of buttocks just screaming to take on the overload from our existing tulip supply. Tulips are my favourite thing to photograph in late January. Normally they take over from daffodils but this year, despite us living in the corner of the country where daffodils first grow we have yet to buy a bunch. 80% of cut flower daffodils sold around the world come from Cornwall.
It was only in late December that I realised that in all my yard care of last year I had failed to replant our bulbs in the autumn. My mind taken up with climbing plants and trellis.
With a house full of tulips my weather wish for today is sharp shafts of sunlight to show them off in photographs. The ones illustrating this blog were all taken with artificial light and then tweaked. Let’s hope for better light today.
Yesterdays blog about an eleven year old event brought up some old photos including this wonderful tree brightening up a January day.
#1175 theoldmortuary ponders
The tree, although beautiful, did not take our attention. The dogs filled the mental space where pondering could have happened.
But this tree turns out to be the perfect specimen for my current experiments with an easy image to double and treble expose digitally altered grey seascapes. I can’t say that I am entirely sure where all this fettling about is taking me but January skies are a lot more interesting with some tweaking.
theoldmortuary.design 