Sweet Winter

I passed a field full of fieldfares feeding on a fallowfield as I drove to the Woodland Trust for a walk this morning. Whenever you see a flock of fieldfares they are facing the same way albeit spread out, and the sun catching their light feathers made it seem like a field of sparkling quartz. I parked in the frozen parking area, and looked at the hard, icy ground with some alarm. Did I really want to risk slipping, maybe breaking something? As I stumbled hesitantly across frozen tussocks of long grass towards the track I noticed the only other car, that of my 80-year-old neighbour who regularly walks fat little Alfie there (no, not her husband), and I thought, well if she can do it I can do it. It was worth it, though not easy walking. At one point I was spotted by a young black labrador and it charged at me from a long way off, full pelt towards me. Had it been a Rottweiler or a Dobermann I think I'd have fallen in a dead faint, but even so it wasn't pleasant. Twice this dog flew at me, both times frolicking and leaping around me though not actually jumping on me, and when its owners came by and wished me a jolly Good Morning! I gave them a black scowl. Why do dog owners always assume everyone will love their pet as they do?

Back home I took the papers and my coffee into the summerhouse which was toasty and bright. In the garden I could see the periwinkle blue flowers of the two spreading vinca plants, a few yellow blossoms on the keria japonica (bachelor's buttons), some intrepid pink roses, and the pinky white flowers on the winter-flowering viburnum. In the front garden the wintersweet is in full bloom, its deeply scented flowers showing a thumbed nose to the weather. The ground is hard and I stayed off the grass with difficulty. I think another path, this time across the lawn, may be on the 'to do' list for spring.

On a completely different note I have been blown away, overwhelmed, by the work of the artist Alfred Munnings www.worldgallery.co.uk/artists/sir-alfred-munnings? 
I watched a film about his time in Cornwall in the early part of the 20th century, and checked to see what his paintings were like. God, they're incredible, mostly of horses with or without riders, and so vivid, so stylised, so utterly beautiful that my breath was taken away. And the body of his work is so vast. That is my new resolution: to see some of them in the flesh this year.