Scuppered Again!
Cripes! What is it with this weather anyway? We're supposed to be in the early grip of winter, which is what we've been long and well accustomed to. So why this inordinately mild weather, when we cannot even enjoy it to begin with? Can't get out into it because the rain is heavy and incessant. So we stew indoors. Oops, ravine walk called off.
Didn't think we would make it out for a ravine walk yesterday either. The rain was so unremitting. No leafy canopy in the woods to help keep us dry at this time of year. We're all right, we can don rain gear and wouldn't mind the rain, but it's the little dogs who, even with their coats will become soaked and then, likely ill from the exposure. It isn't summer, after all.
We were fortunate yesterday, given a window of opportunity when the rain finally ceased and we were able to feverishly garb ourselves and the dogs and set off. The crows don't seem to mind the rain; they're gathering in the ravine, high up in the treetops, likely mostly juveniles of the year. They're raucous, and we love their sounds.
Lots of chickadees, our favourites, flitting around all over the place, and woodpeckers as well. The squirrels can hardly believe their good fortune; another relatively mild day, albeit wet-wet. The trails are slick with sodden clay, even those areas where pine needles or leaves have gathered have gained a slick of muck over them.
It's a grey day, a sopping day, but despite that, I realize that there are warm colours about everywhere. Those leaves still on the many immature hornbeam are a nice ivory-beige; those on the oaks slightly darker brown and crinkled; those of the smooth grey-barked beech a mid-beige transparency. And the glowing greens of the pines and spruce and firs!
Ah, the bright, ivory-green of all those poplar trunks, the glaring white peeling birches, the bright red Sumach candles. There is colour there, after all. I've been moaning the loss of the lush greens of summer for nothing. They've simply been replaced with yet another season's palette.
As we ascend another hill my husband stops, stoops and picks up a rather unseasonal woolly-bear caterpillar, takes him over the underbrush beside the trail to deposit him safe from treading boots into the security of mounds of fallen leaves.
Today we hadn't the opportunity to stand and watch a hairy woodpecker taking its time along the trunk of an old half-peeled tree, looking for insects, unperturbed at our attentive proximity.
Didn't think we would make it out for a ravine walk yesterday either. The rain was so unremitting. No leafy canopy in the woods to help keep us dry at this time of year. We're all right, we can don rain gear and wouldn't mind the rain, but it's the little dogs who, even with their coats will become soaked and then, likely ill from the exposure. It isn't summer, after all.
We were fortunate yesterday, given a window of opportunity when the rain finally ceased and we were able to feverishly garb ourselves and the dogs and set off. The crows don't seem to mind the rain; they're gathering in the ravine, high up in the treetops, likely mostly juveniles of the year. They're raucous, and we love their sounds.
Lots of chickadees, our favourites, flitting around all over the place, and woodpeckers as well. The squirrels can hardly believe their good fortune; another relatively mild day, albeit wet-wet. The trails are slick with sodden clay, even those areas where pine needles or leaves have gathered have gained a slick of muck over them.
It's a grey day, a sopping day, but despite that, I realize that there are warm colours about everywhere. Those leaves still on the many immature hornbeam are a nice ivory-beige; those on the oaks slightly darker brown and crinkled; those of the smooth grey-barked beech a mid-beige transparency. And the glowing greens of the pines and spruce and firs!
Ah, the bright, ivory-green of all those poplar trunks, the glaring white peeling birches, the bright red Sumach candles. There is colour there, after all. I've been moaning the loss of the lush greens of summer for nothing. They've simply been replaced with yet another season's palette.
As we ascend another hill my husband stops, stoops and picks up a rather unseasonal woolly-bear caterpillar, takes him over the underbrush beside the trail to deposit him safe from treading boots into the security of mounds of fallen leaves.
Today we hadn't the opportunity to stand and watch a hairy woodpecker taking its time along the trunk of an old half-peeled tree, looking for insects, unperturbed at our attentive proximity.
posted by Pieface @ 5:59 PM
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