Change in the wind

Tilly and I climb the hill behind our house on a winter's morning.

Halfway up, we sit together and watch...

...the mist drifting white and ghostly through the green and rust of the valley below.

The pup is unusually quiet and still this morning, and so is the world around her.

We look across the hills of the village and out to the open moor beyond.

The air is still tastes of winter, but the snowdrops are up, and the daffodil tips, and birds now sing of the coming spring. I'm reminded of a picture I took of the snowdrops at this time last year, Tilly leaping among them in sheer delight....

Spring is coming. Not soon enough, but it's coming. Inside me, the sap is rising; ideas and art, stories and hope start to push their green shoots through the soil, through the cover of leaf mulch, and into the light of day.