Days Like These

 Today is NOT a ‘days like these.’ Today it is mild and drizzly and grey and damp like a sad elephant who wanted to have a relaxing bath only to discover that the immersion tank has run out of hot water. However, the dankness of the day has not detracted from the beauty and gloriousness of the ruby swathes of hawthorn berries lining the hedges at the moment. They are stunning. It’s been an excellent year for Lady Hawthorn. 

Yesterday, however, WAS a ‘days like these’ and I felt inspired to take a few photos whilst out walking Nell. I don’t often take photos. Quite often, I don’t take my phone with me because I like to engage with the world around me, and Nell, as I walk. But I had my phone with me yesterday. It captured the ‘days like these’ vibe very well: 

Blue skies and sunshine. Countryside blanketed with a heavy frost. Cows. And what is it with dogs and frost? Nell goes mad for frost. Does it somehow heighten their sense of smell? 

This photo I took from the old railway bridge. Decades ago, a train used to run through our village but, of course, its service was axed in the post-war cutbacks. The bridges and cutting remain, however, and one can imagine the steam trains clattering along, stopping at the station master’s cottage, and people in out-lying villages being able to travel easily from one town to another. 

If you look at the line of the trees in the distance and home in on the tallest one about a third of the way in from the right hand side - a sort of paler green, too - well, that is the aspen at the top of our garden here at Damson Cottage. You can just about make out the shadowy outline of the house behind it. 

It’s lovely to see cows out in the fields doing what cows do best, which is standing and staring and eating. Lots of the cattle farms in our vicinity - and there are several - have moved to keeping their cows inside leaving fields empty and a bit sadder for it. What irony, that Britain spent so long achieving freedom for hens, and now we’re penning up our cows. 

Yesterday - a ‘day like these’  - was the kind of day that keeps me going through Winter. I’m hoping for a few more.