An Hour of Blue Sky

A stormy Sunday of wild southerly winds that whipped sheets of rain across fields and Forest. I was drenched when I took my wheelbarrow of hay around to the field shelters and water flooded down the hill in streams.

At midday, the wind changed. Rain and clouds blew away and the expected south westerly arrived with blue sky and white scudding clouds. We took the dogs out into the woods while the fair weather lasted. Most trees are bare now, after a week of storms. No birds were singing and the only sounds were rising wind gusts, a creaking branch overhead and the squelch of our boots as we trod the sodden leaf mould under our feet.

On the edge of the heath, a gorse bush in glorious bloom providing nectar for late bees and other flying insects.

A silver birch, empty of leaves, whipped its fine branches in the wind.

Up the hill and into the woods.

These two mature oaks , their trunks and branches green with lichen, have old lower branches that are pock marked, rotting and waiting to drop to the woodland floor.

Beautiful pale fungi grow out of layers of fallen leaves beneath the oaks.

A secret dell where badgers have dug tunnels into the sandy banks.

On grass beside the wood, we found this soft pink toadstool. It is possibly Russula rosea.