Moments

I have always been interested in how we experience nature. Some of us need to escape for a week or more to the wilderness of moorland or mountains, others need a true adventure in a foreign land. For some the closest they get to nature are the garden birds they tame to come to the hand for tasty treats, or the ducks they fed as a child on the town pond. Perhaps you recognise yourself in these comments somewhere? 
For me this week, nature was in the moments. The moment in the morning as you assess the day whilst you walk to the car to go to work. The moment of bird song whilst sat in traffic. The moment whilst dinner is cooking and you can relax and let the stresses of the day slip away. The moment you pause at the window and watch the sunset as you pull the curtains for the night.

Here are a few of my moments:  

The first streetlights flicker on. The light is diffused and the air rain-fresh and sweet. A blackbird sings.

Nighttime. A car drives round the corner, it's headlights sending a familiar triangle of light in it's regular path across the wall of my room. A familiar scramble and thud marks the arrival home of my neighbours cat as it jumps down from its perch on the garden fence. A dog barks, from along the street, whilst overhead drones the rising hum of a passing plane. 
The owls are absent tonight. 
There is a whisper in the trees of approaching rain.

Possible garden warbler singing at home, house martins nest prospecting at the end house. Sparrowhawk over North Mill Weir just after 8am.

The trees are greening a-pace, the rookery is already hidden from view, the birds’ harsh disembodied calls betray their presence.

Its raining. Get off the sofa and open the back door, the kitchen window, let the fresh damp wildness flow in and merge with the closer, stale inner rooms. Breathe in a deep lung-full of cool rain-clean air, green oak, forget-me-not flowers, and blackbird notes that drip from a hidden perch.

I feel sorry for the Birch, the wind has stripped her new green skirt ragged. She bends & billows now, & from the sweet fresh rain gathers strength to start a second spring.

At last the sky seems calmer, the breaks in its mottled grey highlighted from time to time by the teasing sun. The wind has not yet played out its strength, but seems more reluctant now, and as it catches it's breath between gusts, wood pigeons coo, a robin twitters. And bravely from the battered treetop, a song thrush sings.

Tomorrow is a day off. I hope to walk if the wind has dropped, to see how the season and the weather has brought changes on the patch. Perhaps my first whitethroat of the year will be singing in the hedgerows along Bepton Road, or the hawthorn blossom will be coming into bloom now we have reached its namesake month.