Spring starts

It was a toss up between this photo of a tree peony bud beginning to open or an emaciated toad under the water in the mating arena that our diminutive pond has become.

It's the start of the astronomical spring where day begins to outstrip night after a long winter and the bud seemed more hopeful. The tree peony is not a tree, but a deciduous shrub. This one has simple yellow flows and well-structured foliage and is a bit like the Ludlow variety on this web page.

As for me I'm coming down with a cold and feeling a bit flat after my recent blogging activities. That was not helped by a particularly unpleasant comment being left on my last blog entry by a 'fellow' Blipper last night at 2.30. Someone else commented underneath that the spirit of excellent doesn't turn out to be very translatable. I've had so much positive feedback I shouldn't let it worry me, but hey, humans hurt.


As for the eclipse it was completely obscured by cloud. But I remembered the day when living down in the far west of Cornwall between Penzance and Zennor I watched a curtain of darkness rush in across the western sea at the last total eclipse. It was an awe inspiring phenomenon and provoked in me a kind of distant, tingling atavistic terror. A light rain was falling and there was no wind. A weird half-night fell. The birds stopped singing. The cows stopped grazing. Not a sound broke the silence. And on the tops of the stumpy granite hills of Moelfra and Carn Galver camera flashes pooped like dried peas against an advancing giant.

So I guess we just to have wait and see what happens next. Although I've written so much I am not really that much the wiser. Although I've enjoyed doing it. Here's hoping.