MonoMonday: Countryside

One of the many things that make me happy is walking in the countryside, particularly in the sunshine like today’s. This morning’s walk was once again on Ham Hill with my friend Roger and Carly the retriever, enjoying our regular catch up.

For last Monday’s challenge I summed up my photographic style as “predictable, which it is, but I guess I’m happiest with landscape photography, such as this. Colour version in extras.

A few jobs around the house this afternoon, including cleaning the accumulated winter mud off the golf trolley now that the weather seems to have taken a turn for the better.

It’s National Poetry Day today and this one seemed apt:

Today

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

by Billy Collins