Near Full Moon

Nothing for four days! My reader will have found another blog. Proper Spring weather at the moment, snow showers and cool sunshine, and the nights are cold. A bright clear sunset over the Radnor hills, clear enough to mark the shifting sense of west that my father noticed some weeks ago; as the season progresses the sun's journey becomes more apparent as it sets further 'right' or even 'northwards' along the horizon. The shifting sense of west, of all direction. And now a cold near-full moon over the hill behind the house, the first stars appearing in the deep blue.

A number of walks recently along the old toll road to the post box or just for the puddles. Twice this week we have seen the race horses from the national hunt stables at Byton Hand. At 7.30 as I am getting the breakfast ready we hear the horses being ridden along the main road, and we often see them on the hill as they have a large field up there and are walked up and down twice a day, I think. There are horses everywhere here, and the lanes often have groups or single horses and riders in them. The familiar, atavistic smell of horse shit; stables and dung and warmth.

We are also out more on foot as the days are longer. Dandelions have started appearing, along with the banks of primroses. There is a steep, scary road (but a lot of country roads are scary) from Kinsham to Byton which we can see on the other side of the valley, cutting through the hillside and horizon. At the Kinsham end it rises through mature woodland, and the roadsides are lined with little white wood anemones. Spring seems to be pushing back the Winter but it is not going easily.