Tag: seasons

predictable

The problem with taking pictures of plants is that they tend to be the same ones every year. Especially as we are creatures of habit and we take the same routes to and from the same places on a regular basis.

But even though I see these yellow fields from the train window in spring and early summer every year, as I travel from Gloucester towards south Wales, they never cease to impress. So here they are again.

Yellow field. Rapeseed flowers. Canola

At least I suppose the light reflections and the stains on the train windows are probably different each year.

the same but different

March has been an odd month and although I did just remember to mention St David’s Day and the start of spring here on the blog, I was a bit late with both of them.

Today, of course, is Mother’s Day, and to tell the truth, I’ve been late with that, too. Sadly, even the fact that the clocks changed last night and we lost an hour hardly provides me with an excuse for failing to get a card posted to arrive in time at my mother’s house.
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spring is sprung

I find it impossible to see the signs of spring and not to want to take photographs and write poetry.

But springtime has been written about so often by poets that it’s become almost a cliché in its own right. Anyway, whether it’s due to global warming, geographical location or faulty memory, the seasons just don’t seem to be as clear cut as they used to be.
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spring snowfall

February was mild and Nature got a bit ahead of herself.

The English countryside is now bright with blossom: in the trees, in the hedgerows and underfoot; walking across the park you have to take care not to tread on violets, primroses and celandines.
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a bit of a blur

The year got off to a slow start for me.

Business had slackened in the run-up to Christmas and the year was essentially over mid-way through December. Then we went through a strange kind of limbo over the holiday period: I knew there wouldn’t be many new projects coming in from clients, but I was too tired to do much work on my own stuff. Finally, realising that no one else was likely to get back into the swing of things business-wise until after the school term started, I decided to actually go away for a proper break and try and recoup.
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the long and the short of it

Yesterday was the solstice – the shortest day of the year.

Despite this traditionally being considered the start of winter, the days will now begin to get longer and the evenings will be brighter.

Then again, according to the Time and Date website today was less than a second longer than yesterday; I guess we’ll just have to wait a bit before we notice much difference.

autumn leaf on wooden table

fall back

“Spring forward; Fall back.” – the mnemonic my father taught me to remember which way the clocks needed to be altered at the beginning and end of British Summer Time.

Fall back is also one of those marvellous English phrasal verbs – known by many EFL students as “frazzle” verbs, presumably because of the effect on the mind of trying to memorise them – where a main verb is combined with a particle (adverb, preposition, or both).
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