It’s an odd month, January, isn’t it, being the other side of the festivities and spring seeming a long way off? I think a discarded Christmas tree is a very sad sight indeed and I’m reminded each time I spot it to buy one in a pot next time. I had a short walk around the other day and was amused to see so many birds perched on aerials, basking no doubt. I could do with a sunny spot up high myself, but my dodgy foot is preventing access to any hill at the moment.

A stroll along my local canal had to suffice. Seeing swans with their rapidly-growing offspring is heart-warming. Sometimes the group is three only and other days it’s five. I’m just glad they are surviving.  I’m not sure what the French-bulldog (?) puppy thought of them though, she was very well behaved, apparently called Zena and rather gorgeous to stroke, all soft folds and down – lovely!

I took a picture of my friend’s pond: the fish don’t bother coming to the surface just yet—far too cold! But, there are signs of the next season ahead, signs of new growth and re-birth and it gives me hope.

Hope Springs Eternal in the human breast;

Man Never Is, but always To be blest:

The Soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,

Rests and expiates in a life to come.

Alexander Pope 1733