Our Branch news is small, because over the holidays we see less of each other, many people are away to stay with family, or have visitors to stay with them. And our weather can become interesting at this time of the year. Actually it has been staggeringly beautiful, day after day clear and still, navy blue seas, cobalt sky, far mountains across the water white from crown to foot in every direction. It was only there for a few days, now they are green again - for the time being. But sunrise - at about 8.30a.m., lighting them with peach and amber and gold, has been breathtaking.
Sunsets are all fire and shadow beyond the black lace of the bare trees.
Our snow lasted a very short while, but it still takes the edge of a shovel blade to break the ice on the 15 x 30 lily pond in the courtyard, so the fish have air. The nights are dazzling, so sharp you would think the larger stars were fairy lights caught in the branches of the trees along the drive - big, old elms and sycamore. Wild white swans are flying low - and the huge skeins of geese high up, talking to each other all the time. They never let you miss their going over. The sea is so flat calm today you can see the faint 'brush strokes' my mother calls them, of the shadows caused by the current underneath.