Snow? You saw it here first! Winter came as if by magic tonight over my house!(Sniffed it at 2.30 today honestly)see previous post But Snow? A Cloud bank hung over well above the horizon line today without touching it and allowed the sun to drop out of sight in sight all the way through till 15.52. The bank of cloud has been glued to the horizon lately every evening and the sun has waved its final goodnight usually around 3 as far as cloud cover.So the sky tonight was a wonderful pink to red for lot longer tonight where it should be.But I like this the 3.30 line. The snow is a little yellow I guess but heh! Its my photograph. There has been no fiddling its simply sunlight at play. So Yesterday the robin looked like a Christmas card and tonight the sunset looks like one too. Yeah Hello Decemeber!
Gill McGrath© photo taken at 3.30pm
Chaise Lounge in Sky Blue Cloud
singing my peach blossom song
It’s WINTER Talking……
Gill McGrath©
2.30pm today 30th November (looks like a weather shift to me)
diamonds are for ever
Dear and lovely Em
You know I am not one for jewellery. So you’ll guess that I never actually bought any….. And no one ever gave me any [jewellery] but I am not complaining….I would have thrown it all back anyway…. I kind of settled for the magic stuff that pops out of crackers…. but I always knew about the diamonds.
Lately, I have found glitter…. all over the place….through luck more than judgement….so why did I find a cache of diamonds in such a crumby place today… so close, so quick…. where no one goes but the faeries and grotesque spiders… may be the robin hides……. The kettle was boiling. It wasn’t raining. The sun was ….well…. acting like the sun… but it was dripping diamonds everywhere….!
So I thought of you Em and….
Oh yes… you…. pretty sun, in wintery mode, dazzling…. Who probably shone pink for a bit, earlier … just a flick away from here…. same as yesterday. I have been looking at you close (almost blinded myself) with something called a camera…..for a while now….
And you darling Em, this camera thing ….it’s also called ‘latest bargain’….. it has eyes ….. and it knows more about taking photos than I do…..
Today I got up late… with the chance of catching the usual pink all gone…..so I settled for drifting about in the mist with the magic box, by the washing line…. and look what I found when I wandered away from those lines just now…..a space …. and thousands of glittering diamonds.
Dear Em did you ever, ever see diamonds? I know you can’t really answer me, but I do know what you might say (for once). ‘Yes, yes, yes …. I saw them everywhere!’
Diamonds, diamonds everywhere!(and sometimes a string of pearls)
Much love as always.
Rosie xxxxx
Gill McGrath© Diary Sunday 30th November 9.00am
[Dear Emma© / famhis©/description/ AW/ over and over/flowers©]
sun chasing. still. no place like home
Gill McGrath© Christmas Card I reckon.
Autumn. Morning. 8.00 am. I think. By an upstairs window.
The sun’s pink is turning one particular cloud up there. I have to go and chase it like something possessed. Believe me.
Time has no meaning now. I am moving towards the pink dewy cloud; but the delicious candy mist has been caught behind a wedge of weeping woodland trees ….. So now I scurry on uneven ground to see the fledgling sun.
Run, run, don’t go, don’t leave me now, I moan. Please stay….. I sort of sing… and count to ten. And, so along the road, I kind of dance and suddenly at 8.07…….the Sun.
And with the breeze that always comes, flashing cottontails flicker pink and brown, rabbits, by my feet in new cabbage shoots a new stinging edge.
Are they the canny rabbits from three fields away; the ancient,cosy,shooting place, that burned the other day? Well yes I think.
They did n’t stop to smile or say. Instead; they ran away….. from me….shouting ….’here we go again’…. and waved! Believe me.
Back home the robin was waiting for me singing in the figs.No place like home!
Gill McGrath© Diary 29th November 2014
!!eriF*Fire!! : Shots. Between. Runs. No time
All three photos were taken on November 5 (UK Bonfire night) in the two fields either side of my house. Here is a sequence taken casually during the course of about an hour in the changing light that night.( times approximate).
One – at the fireworks party at 6.00 pm in the rabbit’s allotment field to one side.
Then- the sunset (detail) at 5.00 pm from my turret in the middle.
And then the moon hanging in the huge space, the farmers rabbit field with the wide horizon. I simply abandoned the fabulous comfortable sunset seat and dashed over to the moon to grab it before the clouds could as soon as I noticed it in the light pink sky.
I am not sure which piece of the the sky took more of my breath that evening. At first it was the silent and dramatic spangled sky from the house; then back to a silent gentle night just before lights out as it rushed silently over the field, then forward , back again to a dark and a rather noisy light driven shining on indigo crackling, in the cosiest field! I could only hope in the end that the rabbits had made a run for it through and out of the middle of it, to the quieter place on the other side, run,running towards the moon, but I didn’t see them.
Gill McGrath©
It’s Brian The Talking Bird from Uncle Spikes Farm in Turkey .
SERIES TWO The life of Brian THE NEW ROOSTER DIARIES 2015
Starts here ….
Episode 7: May 27 Meet Brian
Episode 8: June 27 Brian
Episode 9: July 27 …. Brian
Episode 10 September Summer developments Brian
Episode 11. October 5 ….. Brian and the end of summer
❤ Latest Episode ❤
Chapter 12 (posted November 13) Oh dear Brian!…….
SERIES ONE The Original Duke Diaries [NOVEMBER 2014 – APRIL 2015]
Episode 1: November 28 on this page ‘Meet Duke’
Episode 2: December 20 Duke
Episode 3: January 17 Duke
Episode 4: February 20 Duke
Episode 5: March 20 Duke
Episode 6: April 20 Duke
********************************************************************************************
THE ORIGINAL DIARIES Series ONE
Hi people! …. Meet Uncle Spike who writes a lively and informative blog about life on the Turkish farm where he lives with his family. (Press the camel for Uncle Spike’s lovely blog or try the link at the end of the article to get an entertaining and delicious taste of Turkey!). Uncle Spike is the first person I started to follow (and talk to) when I started blogging in October 2013. His talking birds are a regular feature here starting with Duke a rather gorgeous ‘Turkey bird’ ……..Uncle Spike holds the pen…….
Episode 1: Duke
‘Hello! I’m a Turkey from Chicken.No, no, no…. got that wrong, sorry about that. What I meant to say is that I’m a chicken, FROM Turkey, not a Turkey from…. well, you get the gist. But what you may not know is that Aunty Gill, a.k.a. your blogger friend, really is my aunty, coz she named me when I was younger. Yes, I’m the one and only “Duke-Cocka-Locky”, but often known simply as The Duke.
I’m a young(ish) rooster, hence the good looks, and I hold the rank of Number Two on our farm. I did try for promotion earlier this year, but after losing a bunch of feathers in a two hour tussle with Pablo (Number One), I have decided to bide my time before sneaking up on Pablo next year, and kickin’ his butt big time. Well, that’s the plan, but I need to grow a pair first, and workout more first, coz he’s a big bruiser, albeit an old bloke!
So yes, I’m definitely a chicken, and not a Turkey. But I do live in Turkey, although we call it Türkiye, and we have Hindi’s here, which you call Turkey’s – it’s all very confusing to be honest. I tried asking Bonzo, our farm dog, and chief protector, all about this, but he seems to be all brawn and no brain, a bit of a ‘himbo’ I reckon – he doesn’t know diddlysquat. I haven’t told him that to his face, but the guy is chained up, so I think I’m safe enough, haha…
I’m happy being a chicken though, not a Turkey, or even a Hindi. You see, as a ‘working rooster’, I get paid to spend ‘time with the ladies’; I’m not a chicken called ‘Soup’ you see – that’s the name Farmer Spike gives to the big roosters he keeps in the big pen; they are ALL called Soup, but not me, I’m The Duke! That’s me, on the right by the way: note how many ladies I have near me compared to Pablo – my time will come!!
Dunno if it’s true, but I heard through the bird vine that my Aunty Gill and her friends scoff Turkey for lunch…! Yuk, imagine that? Not sure if it’s true, but I wouldn’t wanna be a Turkey, just in case, ya know, I was her favourite nephew for more than just my good looks and cool name. Hmm…
Thankfully we don’t have Thanksgiving or Christmas here, so I reckon I’m safe on that score, no matter if I’m a chicken OR a turkey.’
UNCLE SPIKE
http://www.unclespikes.wordpress.com/
It was simply lovely having you over here Duke……. without eating you this time!~ love from …. Aunty Gill xxx ❤
Next Diary will appear in the post roll on 20th December. Duke has kindly said that he will write regularly every month thereafter!!!
day after day. day after day…nothing moves [ Robin] [3 pics]
Today…
11.00 am
By the window now……
Waiting, waiting for a spark to light the sky
Beyond this new horizon
Framed in familiar layers of pink and purple
Hanging wet in misted lines
Another new dark day
While far off stars still beckon hidden in the blue……
………Just then my robin flew down and began to take his bath 11.07am
Gill McGrath© singing diamonds
[press for the detail eyes,wet feathers,diamonds 3 pics]
(For 3 minutes the bird strutted his stuff- 30 pictures in sequence- everyone a gem!)
swan song at 3
Gill McGrath© sunrise [28th October 2014]
I simply didn’t realize when I took this photo four weeks ago that this might be the last glimpse of the waking morning sun as I see it from the rabbit field close to the house, the gate, the pole. I have been spoiled. The sun has been moving around me on all sides, all year, in full view over the fields, and the valley along a wide horizon. It has also been playing with the lines which beg me to measure her slow progress. Now the morning sun has finally moved right out of this generous frame and is forced to come out behind a dark wood (to the right) at the top of this sometimes windy sometimes frosty hill…..where I will leave her for a bit.
But I know where she is; I know precisely where she is singing that song, even though there is a permanent thick miserable cloud glued to the horizon which she must be always trying to climb up and over….. hardly stopping early afternoon before the daily roller coaster ride downhill, into some thinner cloud right opposite my house, where I might catch her. It might only be for a short glimpse of her and sometimes it is the first glimpse of the sun for the first time all day, but it is here the sun finds she can wave for a dramatic colourful few minutes and say goodnight…. after a day that hardly lit up!
So if that is it….how long is the day now?
If I stand outside by the back door and stretch out my arms horizontally at ‘three o’clock’ and twist myself slightly to the left still keeping my arms carefully at the three o’clock position, one arm will be pointing directly to where the morning sun comes up right now, while the other arm will be pointing to exactly where the sun will fall… Which means the space you see between my arms …… is as long as the day! Yeah!
What the rabbit saw. Its like a grand mirror….
The sun is not there (it looks like sun!)(its not)
The sun hides behind the thick grey swathe of frozen cloud behind me
It can’t be seen…. it sulks perhaps
Still clawing upward trying to wake
Calling out loud
No one notices
So there it stays….
This thing I see is a sweep of reflected light
(from that hidden sun…slipping through as magic does)
On the other side of the field
I think it’s a miracle……
And that rabbit watched with me!
Gill McGrath (at 7. 20 am) Diary 25 November
rabbit on frost
7.20 am this morning
The sun didn’t come up
But its reflected light
On the other side of the field
Dazzled the rabbit……
Caught him dead centre
Gill McGrath© diary 25 November
Gill McGrath 