The blush of dawn.

I don't like the dark days of winter. Rising in darkness always seems like a chore but to be abroad before dawn has its compensations.    The world is stirring and stealing a march on it makes me feel  virtuous.
 Yesterday's walk for the newspapers was lit by a moon just past the full. The moon before Yule, to give it its title. The next full moon will be The Moon after Yule, then the Wolf Moon, then the Lenten Moon and so on.
Up in the western sky, at the anti-solar point, opposite where the sunrise would be, was a pinkish glow.
I wondered if this was the so called Belt of Venus, a rosy pinkish arch visible after sunset or before sunrise, caused by back scattering of refracted sunlight from fine dust particles high in the atmosphere.     Sometimes there is a dark band below it caused by the Earth's own shadow but this morning the horizon was obscured by cloud

Hop into the car and up on to the moors to check against the western sky and ..yes.. I think it was...
the pink band across the sky opposite the  not-yet-arrived  sunrise.... the  moon setting over the Belt of Venus.
 Dark days have their light side.

Willow weep no more

According to the financial pages, there is a housing shortage in the UK. People are desperate to get on the property ladder and have created a dearth of available property.

The problem has come closer to home. The blue tits are homeless. They will have to migrate to the other side of the garden and compete with the tree sparrows and coal tits for accommodation.

The storm winds have brought down the willow, the pussy willow  the goat willow, Salix caprea,  at the bottom of the garden and with it both the nesting box still attached to its stout trunk and the one in its upper branches.

The tree was a measure of our time in this house. In the spring of the first year, the garden was full of daffodils. Grandmother, on a tour-of-inspection visit, picked some and acquired, as was her wont, from goodness knows who or where, some pussy willow twigs, and made up a simple arrangement.

There wasn't a willow tree anywhere near our house.

When the daffs faded and were on their way to the newly established compost heap, I noticed little rootlets on three of the willow stems and thinking they deserved a chance, stuck them into the ground by the garden wall. They flourished and grew into a tall tree which still showed the three trunks corresponding to the three original stems. Pruning and loppings over the years as it spread its shade had reduced its grandeur to a single trunk.

Now its gone. It will be trimmed and sawn up in to logs that will heat us just as it once shaded us.

The bird boxes can be saved and relocated but no sites are as suitable as the old willow where the comings and goings of the parent birds and the fledglings first appearance and tentative flights could be observed, without their disturbance, from the dining room.

We have lived in this house longer than the life of a tree, children and grandchildren have been intrigued by the furry catkins, bees have relished an early drink of nectar in the cold days of early Spring, pigeons have balanced the rickle of twigs they call a nest among it branches and the sparrow hawk has perched there, camouflaged against its grey bark.

The willow will be missed and not just by us.

Winter Warmth