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.

72 micro-seasons 46

Janey...

A cold wind blows in from the sea, and leaves autumn in its wake

Jane...

The drizzle is so fine, I don't feel it on my face. Afterwards my clothes are damp.

Helen...

I pick the last blackberries as a thousand geese honk and settle at the water’s edge like holidaymakers.

Kit...

Down on the Solway the sand martins have left, a salty breeze blows through their empty riverbank residencies

Beverley...

A flush of wild chamomile and groundsel has greened up the tracks between the short, shorn stalks of wheat.

72 micro-seasons 45

Janey...

After the harvest moon, a cool breeze gentles the cheek. The drift of feathers...

Helen....

Swallows have packed up and gone but a creaking in the hot blue sky signals the return of the geese.

Jane...

Long shadows cast in the sharp amber light of early morning.

Beverley...

Morning meditation is edging into the pre-dawn now. A full moon is reluctant to set.

Kit...In the cool light of a super moon a barn owl quarters the fields on milk-white wings

72 micro-seasons 44...

Janey...

Feeding among the barley stubble, startled pigeons scatter across the mackerel-sky

Jane...

Sunlight twinkles silver on a haze of grass.

Helen...

Trees and hedgerows darker green now and ragged at the edges. Sharp air.

Beverley...

The rusting creep of autumn in the chestnut trees.

Kit...

In first-frost folds of fell, foxglove leaves are veined with threads of lace