I popped the phone into my dressing gown pocket and switched off the lights to go upstairs. All the furniture in the room was visible and outside a silver light was filling one quarter of the sky: the full moon behind lacey clouds. My phone took a few minutes off alarm clock duty to let me focus on what I saw – through a glass darkly – what I saw with my inward eye was more than my external eye in the camera could record. It was worth remembering and, I hope, worth sharing.
I have typed up many a post for Will’s Turned Stones these last months but all in my imagination. Let’s reclaim one of them this evening!
A week or so ago I was sitting in the L’Arche garden at Saint Mildred’s, staring at this forsythia, golden in the sun. I had just given a rooted, flowering cutting to one of the houses but still had this one to enjoy.
Of a sudden, a bunch of the flowers took off and flew along the hedgerow. It was a brimstone butterfly, one of the first heralds of spring in the insect world. This one at rest looks like a beech leaf, but in flight is bright yellow, like the forsythia, even more so when the sun is shining through its wings.
A special moment to be grateful for.
The hazel we planted a few years ago on a scrap of waste land was not in flower on New Year’s Day, but yesterday it had shaken out the first lambs’ tails. Can Spring be far behind?
A peaceful and prosperous New Year to each and every reader! God bless,
Will.
Mrs Turnstone’s delight in the flowering of her white hellebore (or Christmas rose) is worth sharing.
Boxing day is not too late to wish you a very happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.
Will Turnstone.
About 10.00 this morning these pigeons had fluffed up their feathers and were clearly enjoying a safe sunbathe.
The wall is not going to win prizes for its brickwork, but the cracks and crevices provide shelter for many creatures including a trapdoor spider. It’s probably hibernating a few centimetres back from the doorway.
The autumn rains swelled the river which runs left to right behind the iron fence in this picture. The water wasn’t deep enough to close the park but there were near-perfect reflections of the bench and bushes on this windless morning, earlier this week.
It was i July last year that I met this sparrowhawk on our city street. I guess it was a young bird, as the intruding magpie seemed to flummox him until I came on the scene. Hawk and prey into the brambles, magpie off to scavenge elsewhere. And I into town.
In the year since then, disaster befell the hawk. About 30 metres from this picture, taken by the back gate of a plumber’s merchant’s warehouse, the hawk was found dead by the showroom door, its breast ripped apart by another predator.
We thought it most likely he had swooped down on another little bird and hit the plate glass window at speed, breaking his neck. A handful of neighbours at least mourned his passing.
Two days ago a partly dismembered collared dove lay on the pavement not far from the original encounter. As long as a certain neighbour continues to feed the birds so generously, I think we can say we have our sparrowhawk back!
It was not all work and no play:
“This afternoon I first saw France and Calais, with which I was much pleased, though it was at a distance.” (from “The Diary of Samuel Pepys” by Samuel Pepys, 9.4.1660.
I still get a thrill to see France, here at Dover Castle evidenced by an horizon that is thicker where the hills and cliffs of the Pas de Calais stand tall.
We pray for peace in Britain and Europe, and we pray that the thrill of going to new or old holiday destinations becomes the enjoyment of the company of our dear ones, an enjoyment that passes over into the coming months back home.
I stopped at the corner of Watling Street and the Whitefriars shopping centre to adjust my shopping, and looked up. There was Dorothy, more properly Rosa Dorothy Perkins, climbing up to the sun through a foxglove tree, Paulownia Tomentosa.
Summer is here!
Watling Street runs from Dover to Holyhead in North Wales under different names in places, but it’s an old Roman Road. There was a Carmelite monastery where Whitefriars now stands. St John Stone was a friar here.
Will Turnstone 
