committee weather

The first heath after the village edge revealed an untidy sky this morning. Stacked grey in the NW hanging in its own precipitate, whilst magnolia banks glowed in the East and, in the South stacked cumulus reflected bright sun through perforated layers of untidy vapours.

A night mist hung under the thinning canopies of trees a little later, but the sky glowed with promise. Back out in the open knives of sun cut through the layers, scoring boiling mist from the dewed lawns - any hissing submerged by the hiss of tyres on wet tarmac.

On top of the plain, banks of mist rose steadily to join the confusion of fluffy cloudlets already heading for the sky. Beasts and motors, cycles and gorse hid in their folds. The horizon was made of tree-tops with no bottoms and, eventually, the sun washed it all, reflecting whiteness from all directions.

I absorbed the morning, like the coats of the Highland cattle that herded slowly along the road, dripping with each carefully placed hoof.

Autumny

I saw a fungal fruiting body at 50 paces as I drove through the slightly misty forest this morning. Shaggy ink-cap if you want an opinion, but its proximity to a mouldering tree-stump allows a range of alternatives.

A delightful little sail yesterday, exercising a number of routes around the estuary to the tune of an Easterly that was steady except for ten minutes almost becalmed near the river mouth on the turn of the tide. Slack wind meeting slack water left us bobbing in a frozen mirror. Just up-river, as we weaved around the moored yachts, the low fast flight of an irridescent bird surprised me, ornithology was briefly offline. My first (clear view of a) British kingfisher in flight.