Mirrors, Water and Reflections 1

For February, I am posting imagery of water, reflections, and mirror images, as a change from winter sunlight in The Scottish Borders. This is not a winter image, as the swans at the moment are inhabiting the Lees, the big field in which different crops are planted, and which has a path running alongside the Tweed where I used to walk, when I wandered further afield than I do now. Somehow the last two years have contained the self within a small radius. Though the mind still goes wandering.

But the year turns towards the light. We are still here. Some of us are still here. And Miss Ruche, the damaged blackbird, is back in the garden, where she has her own spot in the shadow of the Tardis, my studio, where she gets her own share of mealworms; and the swans are back on the Lees.

Overwintering Swans 2

The Borders Bridge

Light on the River

Boat, Willows, Two Swans and Little Temple

Walkers and Swans

Wintering Swans on The Lees

The bridge in the background of this photograph is a remnat of the Borders Railway, a ghost railway that is now rising Lazarus-like between Tweedbank and Edinburgh, rendering parts of Galashiels temporarily chaotic.

We are being threatened with snow, which may ravage the flowers already shooting up in the garden and in the woods.  However, the frost on the ground this morning has disappeared, so I shall take a brisk walk up to the farm on the top of the hill, with its union jack flying from the top of the silo, and then walk down the lane between the russet beech hedges. It is dark this morning, which feeds melancholy, but I shall soon feel happy ensconced in the Tardis, with new songs to listen to, the blower heating up the place, the birds feeding outside the window to provide endless distraction, and the mounting pile of roughs to work on.  It is a good feeling to find new ideas moving into a story that I wrote in a couple of hours more than a year ago. If an idea still interests after a year, that is a good sign. Soon I shall sharpen some crayons on my miraculous Mitsubishi hand-cranked pencil sharpener (which came all the way from Japan with instructions in Japanese, so I have only just worked out how to use it properly) and get out my array of new gouache paints, and really get to work.

 

Swans on River Tweed

Seven Swans A-Swimming

Swans Wintering on the Lees