Saw the old barge loaded with what I took to be willow wands moored on the Oxford canal earlier in the week. As you can see there was bright sun that morning. That was a treat--there's warmth in the sun when it appears and just the sight of the sunlight is enough to cheer you.
Most of the time, though, the north east wind is unrelenting. It's drying out the land and leaving it looking dead and dessicated. As the other photos show, the land and the trees are so bare. There's a kind of purity, I suppose, as if everything has been stripped back to the bone--while we wait patiently for regrowth. As mentioned a few weeks ago, there are always some signs of life, even so--the yellow flag iris plants in the stream alongside Calcroft Lane, for example.
I'd hoped to get all my work done before today, so I could enjoy the long weekend but alas am having to finish up this morning and the early part of this afternoon. Aiming to stop before In Pursuit of Spring--the first part of the Radio 4 series about Edward Thomas, as prose writer, which goes out at 3.30 pm. Speaking of which, I found this page about the Thomas book of the same name on a site that has been put up by, I think I'm right in saying, the Edward Thomas Fellowship. There's also an excellent piece about Thomas and the broadcast on the Guardian Environment Blog. It's great that the Guardian is such a Thomas fan: A Conscious Englishman by Margaret Keeping was recently featured on the Guardian Books Blog and is available via Guardian Books.
Hope you're having a good Good Friday!
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