In Days of Winter Storms

I took a long break from posting on this blog. Life became busy and full of time with friends, family, groups in our community, of feeling useful and being a part of things, of learning new hobbies and activities that I enjoyed.

Throughout recent years, I have still walked and taken photographs, but I learned to paint again ( after a fashion). There was little time left in a busy week.

Here we are now, many weeks into the Coronavirus Pandemic. For all of us, life has changed utterly. Thousands have been gravely ill. Death tolls rise and fall but each number is someone lost. Someone who was loved. A time of grief, unprecedented change, of an unknown future.

If we stay well, here in our Social Isolation of weeks that may stretch into many months, I shall post some photographs from these days, from our corner of this Locked Down world. Sometimes I may look back for photographs of freedom. When we had freedom to drive, to visit and to walk in other places. There is some consolation, knowing that these places we love are still there and that one day, maybe, we will have a chance to return.

The winter storms that came this year were harsh, cruel and wild. Flooding here was nothing compared to other parts of Britain, but we watched the changing skies and counted through the days and howling nights.

Evening sun on bracken and silver birch.

Clouds darkened and changed......

Winter sunsets painted the sky...

...and still the storm anvils came.

The land was steeped in water. Ditches , streams and rivers overflowed.

Inside, we waited for spring . Little knowing what would come in the wake of winter.