The only time during daylight hours today when it wasn’t pouring with rain, was the hour or so when it was sleeting.
Oh God. Please. PLEASE. Please just make it stop.
I’d had a vague notion of going into Stratford this morning with R, but whereas he didn’t have a choice in the matter, I did, and by the time I’d waded across the lawn in my long waterproof coat, rattled off some mostly hopeless frames at a few wet plants, and squelched back inside with water streaming off my hair, my coat, and my camera… I’d rethought the plan, and decided that – grim as it was – home might actually be the best available option. So he went out, and I stayed in.
I lift my hat to the few plants that are braving the swamp in the bottom of our valley, and putting out at least the promise of some flowers. Hellebores will keep going through most things, of course, though mine don’t currently look all that cheerful, but less expectedly the grape hyacinths I bought in pots last year, and planted out as soon as they began to wilt, are also greening up and producing flower spikes. Sadly, now that they’re in the ground I couldn’t get a good angle on them without lying down in the mud, and I’m not dedicated enough to my craft to do that, so I’m afraid that before the Plumpie season kicks off I may need to buy some more potted ones. Oh dear, what a shame.
Luckily for my chances of not winding up as a bog body*, I was able to photograph the catkins that have suddenly emerged on my little goat willow tree without the need to prostrate myself, so I turned my attention to them. And while this isn’t as crisp as the diffused flash version of the wet pussy willow shot that I took almost exactly a year ago, for hand-held, in available light, in the middle of a downpour, I don’t think it’s all that bad.
R: L2, C5, D8.
* I’m currently reading Val McDermid’s Broken Ground, and I’m slightly obsessed with the fact that burial in peat can lead to near-perfect preservation of a body. It’s taken me a while to make friends with Karen Pirie, the central character, but it’s a good book, and I recommend it.
