Ring out wild bells to the wild sky

Ring out, wild bells to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

                                                                                                        ~Tennyson

The frosted flowers of the most beautiful hoar frost covered the branches here a couple of days ago.

I took the scenic route home from the post office that morning to capture it all. For a while I was wandering alone, it seemed just me and the rooks, in the Snow Queens icy land, a fairytale landscape. A glimpse in time, before the sun warmed it back to liquid to trickle down stems and drip off branches, to seep down and water the sleepy earth.

The gentle sound of the river flowing, my footsteps on hard frozen ground, ice cracking. Delicate whispers, of fragments brushing against my coat. Silver shards tinkling, almost bell like.  

The skeleton of nettles wearing ice fur coats.

And hawthorn still with a few snacks for birds, useful on cold days like these. Blood red against purest of white.  A hint of a fairytale...

~*~

Now, the night has arrived on this old and last day of the year. It has been a good one for me and I feel extremely blessed. Thank you for taking the time to stop by here in 2014. I appreciate all of your comments and read each and every one, even if I don't always get around to replying.
I look forward to sharing more things in 2015.
Happy New Year to you!
xXx

The Slow Path

January is flying by but I wasn't fast enough to jump onto her wing and hitch a ride. I feel I have been left behind and  am taking the scenic path. I have been working very slowly. I'm not sure why this is? I think I'm gathering my thoughts and still recharging my creative battery?  It's strange as when the new year arrives you want to throw yourself into the fresh new beginning. But the mind is not willing and is telling me it's a journey not a race. So I've been looking.

I've met Jack Frost a couple of times, but this year he has more business elsewhere, not Wiltshire.
Sky watching. I've done a lot of that. In fact I always do. There is more magic in light than in anything I feel.

January has gifted me with  lavender sweets, celandines in bloom,  a tear shed or two over War horse, falling into heather and the highlands by candlelight via the pages of my book, answering a song thrush that definitely spoke to me! Beautiful new music, browsing in bookshops, sweet incense and warm spicy soup, a meteorite so ancient my mind boggled and of course  the prettiest thing of January, snowdrops.
Thus have been my days. Simple days.
In between I've been painting. This one, a sketch from last year has been on the list for a long time. And  with the muse deciding it's rest time, it's taking longer than anticipated. But, we'll get there. ;)

There's still quite a lot to do on this painting, but hopefully it should be finished next week?

I'll leave you with a clip of War Horse. Do go and see, a beautiful book  an amazing theatre production (which I've yet to see but so want to) and  now magical movie and part of it filmed here in Wiltshire just a few miles away at Castle Combe.