48


FEBRUARY 8TH.



Visitors, avian ones, delight me this cold day. A male bull finch shyly lights on a branch above the food table. He thinly whistles and warbles while eyeing the ground up meal. He prefers to strip the buds from the fruit trees but I grant him that sometimes because of his brilliant, plum pink breast. A female blackcap has stayed around this winter, surviving the cutting climate and spending a great deal of time chasing the tits, the timid chaffinches and the feinting pied wagtails away from the food supply she claims as hers. Much amusement.

The weak sun gives way to a grey, purple cloud tinged with an eerie yellow which presages snow. Sure enough it comes, first in big, flat flakes, then thinning to snow sleet for a time. Unlike the Inuit or a snow expert like Scotsman, Adam Watson I cannot define the differences in snow more clearly. Soft, big, flat, light, sharp, wet, that‘s as far as I can go.

I love the way the near full moon light falls into my bedroom and onto the wooden floor, silver on gold. I can lie in bed and watch it slither across the boards. Snow again, this time thin, spiky flakes which glitter and freeze quickly on the moonlit roof tiles. A tawny owl calls for a mate: Tee whit! And the answer comes urgently: Too whoo!


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Thanks Robert Frost and The Road Not Taken.