The first of the blackthorn coming into bloom in the hedge at Sun Rising, with hazel catkins beside, and all of it sparkling with the dew in the sunlight through the thick milky mist.

Blackthorn and Catkins

After such a mild and very wet winter, it seems appropriate to share this photograph, showing the buds of the pussy willow by the pond at Sun Rising.  If you look closely you can see the sparkling of rain drops on the buds themselves.

It’s a photograph taken on a phone, so not brilliant in quality, but it gives a good sense of the damp grey of the winter, but also the precious beauty of new life emerging.  Spring …

What a mild and wet winter we have had so far here in South Warwickshire.  The number of days when we’ve had a hard frost is still less than half a dozen.  When they do come, it is such a delight : cold but crisp, and you can feel the frost doing its job of cutting back, cleansing, clearing the environment, naturally.

Frost

Tree planting this year has been just wonderful.  We’re over half way through now, having planted some 50 memorial trees, each one in memory of someone loved and remembered.  Some years, we are cowed under rain, or tight with biting cold.  This year the weather has been beautifully mild.  The russet colours of autumn seems at times still to be with us, the very last of the leaves just now falling, a month later than usual.

Reds of Nature

With the cabin now fully functioning, its woodstove has been humming through the course of tree planting day, which has helped as well, keeping us toasty and warm …

With autumn’s beautiful colours, the sheep have now come to Sun Rising.  Kept off the burial areas with electric fencing, they are beautiful black faced lasses, who quietly watch the world around them.  If the weather doesn’t get too wet, they will stay on the grassland for a month or so, mowing down the last of the summer’s grass growth.

Rose Hips and Sheep Grazing

With the autumn has also come the rain.  Although the ground is still not too muddy, some newer graves, and the area around the new cabin, are now rather claggy.  With some sharp frost, the earth will break up, ready for spring …

(Please forgive the poor quality of this photo.  I’ve not quite got the hang of this new phone camera!)

Even on miserable days, the clouds at Sun Rising can be inspiring.  When life feels heavy, and little lifts the soul out of the grey, the ridge of Sun Rising Hill creates that thermal, breaking up the skies, and offering us moments of wonder.

Clouds and Grasses at Sun Rising

I love this photograph.  Not only does it show beautifully the rich diversity of cloud shapes and colours, but beneath it the many grasses of the wildflower meadow, now thoroughly run to seed.  There is the tall false oat grass, the tight crested dogstail, the whiskered meadow barley and soft yorkshire fog, amongst a handful more I couldn’t identify for sure.

Nature is always a beautiful mixture of beauty in both its intricate detail and its vast expanses.

The meadow over the summer has move from the yellow of buttercups to the white of oxeye daisies to the purple of knapweed.

Although the development of the pond at Sun Rising is still slow, we did spot some newtlets earlier in the year.  Now those little creatures are turning into newts …

Sun Rising Newt

A beautiful photo taken of the Roundhouse, the seeding grasses in the wind, just before a summer storm …

Stormclouds over the Roundhouse

After such a long hard winter, and such a slow start to the summer, the wildflower meadow burst into life in early June and was a blaze of colour for a wonderful six weeks.  The roses were better than ever before, both the wild dog roses and field roses in the hedgerows and on graves, and the David Austin roses around the Roundhouse.  Rosa rubus comes into flower first, and then Rosa Frances E Lester, shown here in the photograph.

Roses by the Roundhouse

With a month of such hot and dry weather in July, however, the season has been a short one, the wildflowers going to seed very early.  You can see knapweed here in the photograph, a few oxeye daisies, betony, and buttercups, amidst the seeding wild grasses.  It is now the thistles that are coming through, the teasels flowering, the field scabious and meadow cranesbill bringing soft mauves and purples to the burial ground through the tall hay of the grasses, playing in the wind.  And around the edges, there are the soft pinks of the bramble flowers and willowherbs.  The older crab apples are also now fruiting – memorial trees that are over five years old.

And thankfully the butterflies, hoverflies and bees, so late in appearing, are now with us in abundance.  Meadow browns, gatekeepers, whites, small skippers, small heath butterflies, and a whole range of moths I can’t begin to identify.  If you come up to Sun Rising, you’ll see the meadows going to seed, beautifully tatty with such subtle colours and lines, and the whole thing humming with life.

We shall begin to mow over the coming weeks, first strimming the grasses that have fallen in wind and rain, and under footfall.  If you have any queries, do let us know.