Grey Moods

I love the mistiness of this time of year. Yesterday the valley was awash with low cloud, trees emerged silhouetted and still, dripping with moisture, the view stopped about 100 yards away. And in light rain the Welsh hills seem to dissolve into layers of cloud and mist, a grey pallette ranging from grey-white to grey-black in the distance, a shifting pattern of shapes stitched together with old hedges and thorn boundaries. Words for the greyness; pearl, mackerel, gunmetal, silver, pewter, but none capturing the mattness, the blank flatness of the clouds. And this morning the skies are low again across the valley, the sky a pale backdrop to the still trees. It is grey and cold. But it is the middle of April, and so the grey air is alive with birdsong.