The dying of the light

At 20:13, salmon pink cirrus against dark blue in the west; by 20:32, no colour but darkness.

I loathe this time of year.

Spring?

What a difference a week makes

A couple of weeks later than usually expected, finally the first day where you really don't want a jacket when you're out in the garden.

At last, at the very end of a week's doing not a lot, the first day I could actually sensibly do anything in the garden, and then sit out at the picnic table to blog about it.

Later: having not latched the patio door properly, the Tonks got their first unauthorized sneak outdoors, coming as far as the edge of the patio, before I noticed -- at which point they turned tail and ran back to safety.

Spring

The sunrise beating the sunrise alarm; cock pheasants squaring off on the unpaved side-road in Bourn as I drive into work; bright twilight at 6pm.

Were it not for the windy & wet weather, it would be bicycling season now.

Signs of spring

The day dawned with clear-ish skies, and it was appreciably daylight when the alarm went off. Before that, birdsong had roused me from the depths of sleep.

Also 23999 miles, parked at work.

House & Garden

The kittens are growing noticeably, day by day, and have integrated into the household. Jemima will share her igloo-basket with Yoko, now, rather than flee in terror from this home invasion, and they will all play musical dishes happily at meal times.

Reaching an accomodation

Yoko is also getting a bit podgy -- Kamina had a bit of a runny tummy, and though he soon got over that, he is still smaller than his sister.

Both will use me as a warm place to sleep if I go for a nap, with Yoko even crawling into by dressing gown sleeve while I'm wearing it; while Kamina will just demand that I pick him up and fuss him.

In the garden, the snowdrops are just about finished, but the irises and croci are out, while the forsythia is just starting to burst its buds; and in town today, the early daffs on Parker's Piece were out.

Into the darkness

A ridiculously mild weekend, but windy; sun and dark cloud alternating, but never quite getting the rain we were promised. Still T-shirt weather.

Visited Neil and Angela yesterday to see the kittens again, and on the way spotted my first 55 reg Smart.

It felt very strange today in the mild (16C still at 17:20!!) ) setting up a pond heater ready against the promised chilly winter. But even in a normal winter it would be useful to keep the ice melted a bit.

Had to re-set the glazing on the greenhouse automatic window again. I think it must be a cat's landing pad from next door's summer-house.

And the clocks went.

Season's End

Well, it looks like today will be the last real cycling day of the year, with the rest of the week set to be wet. Set out with a red sky behind me, and the harvest moon fading into the cloud coming up from the west. Better than yesterday's fog, where I chanced cycling — just as well, it turned out, because I could get past where a car had argued with a bus at the next nasty bend beyond where I wrote my car off at the end of Feb '04, by getting off and pushing.

It's been a hectic time the last couple of weeks, doing lots of interviews at work (finally made an offer to one chap), trying to get the garden sorted for winter — evena after shredding all the woody bits and setting them to mature a bit to use as mulch next year, I really do have enough green waste to fill the green wheelie bin for the rest of the year! And I can see and get at a lot of the front wall, so that needed painting (even though rain splattering has covered some of it with mud again, where the gutters overflow).

In between time I've been taking the chance to keep on harvesting blackberries — so prolific this year that I've been filling a lunchbox in half the time of previous years — maybe we really are going to have a hard winter. And that the crop is not being eaten by birds, just mildewing, shows how the ecology has been disturbed.

I've avoided looking for a new cat — Neil and Angela have acquired new kittens following their previous set expiring of old age, which gives Karen a little bit of a fix instead.

In the last couple of weeks, too, the duckweed in the pond has decided that it is autumn, and has gone from filling it to overflowing to fading and sinking; and the cyclepath on the M11 road bridge has at last been measured out with white paint marks every 20m. Maybe some time in the next year or so, the surface will finally be refurbished.

Catchall catchup

Cycling home after supper, about 19:30 on the 7^th, the crescent moon low amongst stripes of cloud was very SF-art ish; as was the rising gibbous moon, about a week less half an hour later.

With the equinox, the sunrise alarm starts being useful again.

The seasons turn

House shadow on the curtains when the alarm goes off; plums starting to crop (just the wormy ones to date), and an amazing crop of blackberries on the rogue plant at the bottom of the garden (which seems to have done well after much dismembering the other year — this is only the second significant crop, and first decent one, in its 15 years)

Garden goes mad

Spent much of the day gardening. The Forsythia burst into bloom when I wasn't watching; and now buds are starting to burst on cherry and plum. Though I cut it on Friday, the grass looks like it needs another go. The weeds have grown like it was May.

At least the evenings are long, now.

The other sign of spring - dawn chorus, all week. And I have to stop waking at dawn.

Sunrise alarm

In the first week of March it's still useful.

In the second, it's there to ease the waking before the radio comes on, but isn't really needed for light after that.

In the third, there's no point.

Contrarian

I read somewhere a little while ago that people sleep more while on holiday.

Then why is it that I was up bright and ready to face the day before 06:30 while cycling last week, but was hardly awake at all this morning as work recommences?

Perhaps it's that we're now at the stage where the sun rises over the house opposite sometime after 06:30, so as I drink my morning coffee, I watch the shadow move across the bedroom curtains. Dark mornings soon. Ugh!

Decline and fall

Well, the autumnal weather carries on, blustery, drizzly, and grey. And the evenings are definitely closing in - no longer is it light enough to read outdoors at 10pm. July, and I'm already feeling seasonally affective. *sigh*

They're OK…

…the last days of May. It's light now by about 04:00, up from about 05:00 at the beginning of the month (remembering a pre-exam all nighter pulled lo these many years ago, typing up and nroffing an essay, and staggering home just after 05:00 with the sky just reddening with the dawn). The bush roses are in full flush, the climbers are starting to flower, and generally it's getting once again to a state like this:

After a brilliant weekend - clear skies for the fingernail Moon/Venus conjunction on the 21st, lower and further north than a couple of months back, it's cooler and cloudier, dank stratus under high pressure.

Cycling in to work - one of the beneficial side-effects of being forced to cycle after writing the car off being that cycling is being much more the default this year - I'm amazed by the number of clueless young rabbits bouncing about, more than I've seen in other years - even more amazed that there haven't been any flat ones, also unlike previous years.

Summer Time…

Or at least, Daylight Savings, at last.

#include <obligatory rant about the asymmetry of transitions - a month after autumn equinox, but a week after the spring one, rather than a month before>

The weather may not be summery, but at least it was dry enough for part of the weekend to get out and start fighting the creeping chaos in the garden. In previous years, I've been able to get started in late Feb, but with work, late winter and wet weather, not so this year. So the weeds are everywhere. Made a first stab with the hoe, and a rudimentary bit of hands and knees work to deal with the worst of the goose-grass (cleavers). Also found one of the goldfish in the pond had had a big chunk taken out of its back, leaving it paralysed - presumably a narrow escape from a heron.

Equinox

Spring is here, as evidenced by equinoctial gales, bringing squally rain and hail showers. Thus it was filthy weather when I picked up my new car, and nursed it gingerly along the A428 to work. A colleague commiserated on my having to cycle in in such weather, but I was able to disabuse him of the notion that I was quite that masochistic. The gusty windy weather - with Met Office warnings - continues, and as the Smart is rather tall for its short wheelbase, I was not at all inclined to show it off when we went out last night.

Meanwhile in the garden, the early tulips, the glory of the snows, the kingcups, hyacinths (all varieties) and forsythia are taking over from the earlier bulbs and winter flowers like winter jasmine and viburnum. The pond is showing its first lumps of frog-spawn after all the froggy activiy over recent weeks. And this afternoon between the showers it was nice just to sit out in the sun near Hobbs' Pavilion on Parker's Piece, which is a good sign of the turning of the seasons.

Light Dawns

The start of March marks the season where the sun rises, and, on a clear bright morning, does naturally what my alarm clock has been doing during the winter, making the room light by half past six. Sunlight is streaming into the bedroom well before 7:00 now.

Bring me Sunshine

Today, sunrise was 07:30 or just a whisker after - so no need for headlights on the way to work. Hurrah!

Blah

It's the last rag end of autumn fading in dull grey into winter. My mood tells me that I've not been getting enough sunlight these last couple of days, so it's going to have to be SAD-hat time for the next few evenings at least.

Not that the world is helping. Setting aside imbecilities perpetrated by some of my colonial colleagues - not quite as bad as last year where tooth-grinding annoyance led to dental work - there's the whole world. If I put on the radio in the car, I have the choice of popular music stations (which seem to be 60+% motormouth presenters who are too full of themselves and seem to belive that we live for the sound of their voices, 20+% unlistenable music - manufactured pap or shouty stuff - and the rest mostly harmless), news and current affairs (which is either depressing [terrorism], boring [media self consumption - celebrity stuff, however masked as investigative journalism], or both [Westminster politics]), so in increasing Grumpy Old Git-dom, I end up listening to the Third Programme - which is fine when it's plain classical, or world music, but I still really, really, cannot stand opera, lieder and jazz that's sung in that sort of style.

It gets worse

Outside I can't tell if the stars are out, but the sky is pretty much dark, the moon is showing, and the car-park lights are blazing away.