weather – Page 24 – don't confuse the narrator

timber!

I went for a walk the other evening and found my path blocked by a tree.

There are, of course, a host of literary connections I could make: Birnam Wood; the Ents of Middle-Earth; the “very, very country dance” of the Narnian trees that Lucy dances her way through to reach Aslan in Prince Caspian; the trees that “walk[…] down the side of the cutting” in the landslide scene of The Railway Children…
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memories

Spring pours sunshine
through the woods to dapple
on my polished shoes.

I hear birdsong echo
children’s laughter; green
is a scent, a taste
fresh on my tongue.

(The opening lines of an old poem.)

moving targets

Usually, I take pictures of flowers and plants because they’re pretty and they tend to keep still; just occasionally, though, a moving image is too delightful not to at least try and capture it.

dogs playing in small pond — dogs just wanna have fun

The photo doesn’t do justice to the reality: there were four dogs in total, and for a few brief minutes before their – unseen – owner whistled them back, they chased each other in and out of that muddy puddle with pure unfettered joy.

in Catalonia I

View from the headland, north of Llançà, Catalonia,

La tramuntana
turns the beach
vertical, lifting it
towards a cleanswept blue
where tiptilting gulls
fly backwards.

It’s not quite the right photo, of course, but the tramontane wind blew so hard for four of the five days of my recent trip that I couldn’t see or think or focus. I could hardly stand upright most of the time, so was pleased to find even a few lines of poetry, without worrying about whether I had appropriate pictures to use alongside.

A painter’s light, you said,
but I saw nothing,
eyes scrunched against
drifting sand and tufts
of cottonwood.

coast north of Llançà, Catalonia, Catalunya

summer time

Today we are back on British Summer Time, so it would make sense if the blog post were about summer or clocks.

Yesterday, the weather was glorious and there were plenty of summer-like flowers to be photographed. For some reason, though, although there were plenty around, I failed to take a picture of a dandelion (either in bloom or as a clock). I did find these water buttercups**, though: