First frost of the year
on my little Sadie and the red car that lives up the road
Tag: River of Stones
January Small Stones# Ten
A third of the way through January already, winter is creeping darkly along. There is a suggestion from the Met Office that we may have some snow and ice on Saturday, which I really don’t want. Today at eight fifteen, it was a morning for headlights. So different from yesterdays blue, I got wet but it wasn’t raining. 100% humidity and all of it settling on me, turning my hard work curls to frizz.
I walked the usual way to work, and along the path beside a row of Victorian terrace houses, and with nothing but fog ahead, I glanced down. Leaves from the sycamores across the road dotted my way, in various states of deterioration. In August they were rich, bright green – summer’s rain had stopped them from frying, and autumn was late. It was late October before they were yellow, then gold, bronze, brown.
Now a few deep bronze ones had found their way to the edge of the walls. Underfoot, some clear shapes in brown remained, many very dark. Some had felt heavier shoes than others, and had jagged edges. An awful lot were totally trampled into black marks on the flagstones, decayed, disappearing, and waiting for a hard frost or more heavy rain to wash them away. I wonder if they will be visible next week. I must remember to notice.
January Small Stone# Nine
Midweek. What to do to make Humpday pass well? On Sunday I walked at Bowling Green Marsh and the weather was dismal, damp and mizzely. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of resting migratory birds, but I didn’t have my camera and I had my hands full with the dogs. This was the best I could do with my phone camera. 
These out of focus sweeties are widgeon. Today, the sky was brilliant blue, so I checked the tide tables and convinced a hobbit that he needed to drive me. I promised him treats – he’s a bird lover, he prefers birds of prey really but has never been there. I still only had my phone camera, but this was the view. 
I ran him down the lane, into the hide and then to the viewing platform. Pretty good for a lunchtime jaunt eh?
January Small Stone# Six
Red vested love bird
tweets declaring territory
scatters flyers its size twenty times
widgeon’s scarved with orange rise,
with wings a choir of sopranos
and a solo plover wades haughtily by
January mist over Riversmeet
tide covers a murking of mud
fading web prints rushing away
taken by sizzling foam
twitchers with tripoded lenses
gaggle off to identify geese
arriving as guests of the Clyst.
January Small Stone# Four
January Small Stone# Three
After work today my friend and I went to Topsham and had a gentle stroll around the empty streets, along to the end of the Goatwalk for a view of the estuary in the dark. Although the sun had set at four-thirty, the lights were shining down river at Exmouth and across the river to the west at Starcross. Occasionally the glow worm lights of a train travelled along the far shore, and a gap in the clouds, where the moon sprang through, created a reflection of the same oval shape in the water.
We were actually being peeping Toms – slowly walking past the windows that had curtains open. Several homes had lights on, giving us a tiny insight into their world. Fairy lights and a few Christmas trees were still visible and the soft glow from hearths, plump sofas, cosy cushions and curled up pets. At one house where the kitchen was at the front, we could see an elderly couple chatting over a teapot at the table, as they must have for decades. A magical walk. 
January Small Stone # One
My first small stone of 2013. I went to the Otter estuary today, to celebrate the New Year sunshine that Mother Nature generously provided. Can you imagine how excited I was to see a magical rainbow?
What a wonderful message full of meaning, we are being sent the light that we need, the seven colours of the Chakras, bringing balance and harmony to the world.
The Sunday Post: Solid
Jakes theme for the Sunday post this week is solid. I’m posting a picture of a granite boulder in the North Teign river, called a Tolmen stone. Legend says that fertility is guaranteed, if the rock is climbed through nine times, at the right time of the Lunar cycle.
So my ‘solid’ rock has a metre wide hole in it!
Visit Jake’s Printer, check out his animated graphics and the other entries this week.
http://jakesprinters.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/sunday-post-solid/
Confusion is the Child of Assumption
I don’t usually say this but for once if anyone has any feedback I would really appreciate it 😉
Confusion is the child of assumption
Stalk me and question
Ask if I have no shame
Is there nothing sacred
Nothing to be withheld
In this virtual world
Ask if I have no shame
When I share and bare my spirit
I have none I am raw
I have no need to conceal
I am more than half way healed
Ask if I have no shame
And then project your own
Ignore the tribute made
Do I have to shout it loud
To save the virtual stalk
No shame in fact I’m proud
For navigating a wonky journey
So often on my own
Fulfilling a role too early
But now well prepared and grown
Save your stalking energy
For shame unbinding threads
That never served you honestly
Just blanked it from your head
Where still it festers now
January Small Stones # 31
I’ve always hated endings. Way back in time when I left school, I hated saying goodbye to teachers, other girls, even the building. If I see people in films parting, I cry, if I have to leave even a job that I hate, I still get upset. When I have to say goodbye to friends I make on holiday around the world, I cry.
As a therapist, I build intense, often long, relationships where my clients share their deepest untold secrets; hopefully they heal and are strong enough to continue their paths without me. This is a wonderful milestone that is tinged with sadness for them, to leave their ‘mummy’ and go it alone, but they are surprised that I should have a tear as well.
So here I am at stone 31 feeling sad because it’s finished. I’m very pleased with myself, I didn’t think I would make every day and several times thought I would just skip a day, no-one would know – except me of course. So I held on and found something to say or a photo to take. I haven’t taken it as seriously as some, I’ve mucked about and had a laugh, maybe not been as ‘mindful’ as intended and reprimanded myself for that, now that I am good at!
I’ve met some lovely people, received warm loving comments and read some superb writing this month and I really will take part again. Meanwhile, thank you to all involved with January Small Stones, Writing Our Way Home, and a big fat brave, GOODBYE until next time.
Lucid Gypsy 