72 micro-seasons 52

Janey...

Gutters plashing, furious

streams in spate, high-tide pebbles roiling - 

The sound, always, of water in my life

Beverley...

Four muntjacs hold time before running over the track-braided earth, graze a while, and vanish.

Helen...

The storm leaves great drifts of beech leaves in the corners of a courtyard, bright blue sky above.

Kit...

Ever shorter days ...

we swim in the almost-light hugging the bank, the swollen river running

Jane...

Hints of pink crack through grey scudding clouds. My friends the trees appear, looming.

72 micro-seasons 51

Janey...

After the full moon

gulls hunt insects in the slates

heralding their finds

Beverley...

Countless glistening cobwebs hang on empty seedheads and faded grasses. Morning mist makes ghosts of trees.

Helen...

Acer leaves fall and lie like tiny stars, red, yellow and gold.

Kit...

Up from the barely dressed birch copse, a quiver of forge-fresh crows fly into the greymilk sky

72 micro-seasons 50

Janey...

The  silver-blue stillness of sea and sky...

We watch a juvenile cormorant learning to dive

Kit...

In the walled garden, the last handfuls of runner beans ... and one final small fig, hiding amongst the turning leaves.

Jane...

I break the water's skin and swim to dusk's still-clear light, so thin I could go through it.

Helen...

In warm sunshine I string up onions and pack potatoes into sacks.

72 micro-seasons 49

Janey...

A pale sunbeam lights

purple clouds across the sea 

Storm rain drifting in

Helen...

Dizzied by autumn colours in soft rain. Red, ochre, amber, russet, brown.

Beverley...

Undecided libra season: sometimes wet, windy and grey; sometimes dry, warm and bright. Wardrobe dilemmas.

Jane...

Thick frost on the windscreen in a dark corner, while the rowan at the top of the drive blazes golden light in the morning sun.

Kit...

Kippford in the gloaming ... a babble of curlews dip crescent moon beaks into lowtide mud - overhead a rush of Canada geese head west.

The Golden Hour

Here in Aberystwyth, on the wild west coast of Wales, the golden hour is particularly lovely...in the summer the very late sunset makes for meandering strolls along the prom, late sea-swimming, dogs and dolphins (if we are lucky). In the winter the golden hour is for a brisk walk to watch the starlings in their swoops of murmuration coming home to roost under the pier before darkness descends. And in the liminal times of year, the golden hour is the time to bring in the wind-blown sheets, fill the log-basket, and think about cooking, as the students and workers dally home...

72 micro-seasons 48

Janey...

Silver-grey pigeons bask in the early sun on the slate rooftops

Beverley...

Clusters of sugar pink cyclamens are popping up under hedges, like tiny sherbert sweets.

Kit...

After days of blue and glass the wind whips up and the sea is an angry broil of brown

Jane...

Green branches shift and sift against rose-gold dawn

Helen...

Early Valencia morning: dark chocolate mountains like cardboard against an apricot sky. Later, an eagle gliding.

72 micro-seasons 47

Janey...

Rites wheeling and crying in a storm-blue sky

Kit...

Ardnish, Lochaber, and the deer come down off the ridge by night, leaving their calling cards by the bothy door ...

Beverley...

The delectable smell of wet, turned earth seeps through the hedgerow as the rumble of the tractor and plough make a turn.

Helen...

Early morning sun lights the top of the fells lime green and yellow.

Jane...

The light is clean, clear and thin in the woods after the rain. Everything is wet and still.