Changing Seasons – January – Cornwall in Colours

I mentioned earlier in the month that I would be illustrating the natural world close to home this year – a sort of photographer’s nature journal. I have also decided to link it to the Changing Seasons Photography Challenge, hosted this year by Su Leslie. A very talented Kiwi lady who lives in Auckland.

January 2018 has been a washout month in more ways than one. If not raining, then the winds have been so ferocious as to keep me indoors. The countryside lanes are full of mud from the heavy tractors; the underground spring is so full that it has become overground and the lane now a stream. Though unlike England’s usual grey and brown winter palette it is still very green.

On January 6th I see Alice in a frosty field as the early morning sun’s rays reach her. We rarely get frost this far west.

Frosty Alice

Blustery Gulls

Inquisitive Sheep

Rooks roosting

Shadowland

Blue Sky

Fields are full of gulls, sheltering away from the blustery coast. Fat sheep graze on the rich green grass, unperturbed. A rare blue sky mid-month. A pastel feathery sky with crows flying home to roost. A neighbour’s Yucca casting pretty shadows in the twilight hours.

The evening stroll which ended with a golden sunset.

Hedgerows are still bare. Not even any evidence of leaf buds emerging. Trees are bowed and blown by the south-westerlies.

I search for colour: Gorse in the hedgerow down the lane; winter heliotrope is beginning to bloom along the verge where last year’s common hogweed is still flowering; navelwort, pennywort or penny pies (Umbilicus rupestris) and Common ivy (Hedera helix) greening up among the crevices on the stone walls.

Gorse

Several dramatic skies. All featuring Rogers Tower, a folly built on Castle an Dinas (Penwith) hill where there are the remains of an ancient hill fort with three rings of defence that go all the the way around. (Not to be confused with a hill fort with the same name near St Columb Major)