What a difference a day makes. Today I took the big dog for a walk, taking in a visit to the chicken pen. The hens were out & about scratching & strutting in the sunshine, for most of the previous snowy week they had been huddled in their houses just coming out when a person appeared to see if anything tasty was on offer. Today I looked back at the view & all was green & full of bird song. Last week, after a slow & slippery walk up the hills & footpaths to this same spot outside the hen pen, I looked and saw white and heard muffled distance sounds.
Normally I stride-out, walking fast to a view-point & then stop and look and listen. The big dog trots along beside me or out front when it is possible to use the full-length of the long lead. For the last few days, with snow & ice on all walking surfaces this has not been possible, we've both carefully picked a non-slippery way up to the end point of a shortened outing. The big dog is designed for snow with a thick coat, large body size & decent-sized paws &, a nose that can pick up an interesting molecule at at thousand paces. The snow has brought so many exciting smells for her - I wonder if they are new scents or familiar scents emphasised in some way by the weather. The ability to scent a pile of horse-poo under inches of snow has been a wonder to behold, the following game of toss-the-poo a great laugh. I'm going to miss the snow ploughing with the nose followed by rolling in the snow & chasing round in circles leaving great pock marks on the pristine snowy surface. Life is one big change!
We visited out ruined-church site 2 days ago, no flooding there. The Froome, that runs just a few meters away from the boundary wall, had risen about 2 metres and was racing along, especially as passed under the nearby bridge. At this site there is about a metre to go before the banks are burst - it did that in 2007, moving large bales of hay & straw around the adjacent fields like footballs. I read today that the TS Eliot poetry prize has been awarded to a work that focuses on the River Severn - I'm being to appreciate why one river could provide sufficient material for such an enormous achievement (Philip Gross).
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