Snow, rapidly melting, at the hospice this morning.
Snowy Morning
Tag: Snow
Teasel
3.02 pm: A sparrowhawk swoops around the bird feeder, perches in the crab apple for a moment, then flies off without catching anything.
Early afternoon snow, an after effect of yesterday’s Storm Arwen, covers the seed heads of the plant formerly known as Sedum, now Hylotelephium spectabile. A female blackbird and dunnock forage beneath the feeders which attract great tits and blue tits, a coal tit and a nuthatch.
The snow soon starts to melt and these cyclamen, in the bed beside the patio beneath the cordon apples, look none the worse for it.
Snow over Shelley
I thought about calling this post The Last Snows of Winter, but who knows?
We passed a van and a car that appeared to have been abandoned in the weekend’s snow. Up on the ridge around Emley snow had drifted in the sunken country lanes.
The sky wasn’t really green – I’ve got out of the habit of using cerulean blue and it didn’t turn out as I’d expected on the warm cartridge paper of my Daler sketchbook, especially as I’d added a light wash of Winsor lemon.
Wintry Showers
We’re having wintry showers this morning but it’s milder so the sleety rain and wet flakes of snow are actually clearing the pavements of the snow and ice that have covered them during the last week.
We’ve decided that it’s a good day to stay put and catch up, so we’ve got a batch of dough rising above the hot water tank in the corner of the studio, ready for knocking back, and I’m delving back into my sketchbooks to catch up with my blog posts.
When I drew at Charlotte’s at the end of January, patches of snow on the distant moors were imperceptibly disappearing into the mist.
I drew these in my pocket-sized notebook, which has such small pages that you can pick it up even when you’ve only got minutes to spare.
That morning I also drew cushions on my brother-in-law John’s sofa and a crow by the boulders in the goat enclosure. They’re similar subjects; when I can’t get out to draw rocks, cushions make a reasonable substitute.
The goats love climbing and settling down at strategic look-out posts on the rocks but during the winter they’ve been confined to the stables. Hopefully they won’t have long to wait before it’s suitable for them to live in their outdoor enclosure again.
The Old Cart Shed
The old Cart Shed at Blacker Hall Farm dates from c.1620, so the old beams always appeal to me as a subject.
Holmfield Tree
The little sketchbook was handy again when at a family meal at Holmfield House in Holmfield Park, Wakefield, I drew this tree.
Snow on the Hills
From molehills to mountains: the moors on the tops of the Pennines are still covered with snow. We returned to Charlotte’s Ice Cream parlour at Whitely this morning, a regular coffee stop in the days when we had my mum in tow. It was often the one day of the week that she got out and, despite her deteriorating eyesight, she always appreciated the panorama . . . and of course the coffee and the scone.
I must take after her. Oh dear!
Snow Showers
Coxley Valley, 10 a.m., 30ºF, -2ºC: I cross the beck which is brown with melt water to draw on a flat area that, thirty years ago, was a meadow. Since then alders and crack willows have spread from the side of the beck. 
At this time of year the leaves of wild garlic are starting to show amongst them but today a centimetre of snow covers the ground. Wet snow patters on my fishing umbrella as I draw ivy and bramble on a fallen willow.
It’s so long since I drew in the snow (as opposed to drawing it as seen through our patio windows) that I record the scene in a photograph and submit it to the BBC Weather Watchers website.
A wren flits across the puddly path as I leave the wood and hops under a bramble; a robin sings despite the snow shower. 
The song thrush by the path at the edge of the beck isn’t singing but I have heard it at the edge of the wood when I’ve been drawing in the back garden.
Link: BBC Weather Watchers
First Quarter
IT’S A LOVELY Easter Day and also the last day of March so it seems the perfect opportunity to trawl back through my sketchbooks for the first quarter of the year to pick out the drawings that I never got around to putting online.
My first sketch was drawn from a photograph that I took on our first and sadly so far only walk around Langsett reservoir back in early January. The two stones are gateposts of an abandoned farm called North America.
Quarter of a mile further on you come to a cleared area of plantation sheltered by a belt of silver birches. The habitat has been opened up to encourage nightjars and other birds to return.
A View from the Cinema
We had most of the house decorated in February so I felt that I couldn’t settle down to work at home and as the weather was impossible for getting out drawing I took the opportunity to escape to the cinema a couple of times. This was drawn as I waited for the matinee showing of Lincoln. I wrote;
A few black-headed gulls and a carrion crow patrol the car park. A few tiny patches of snow linger on the fringes of the rough grassland. Dull bare trees shroud the busiest section of the M62 – currently being widened. The valley is more or less snow free, the higher ground snow-covered It’s easy to spot the cars that have come down from higher ground because of the 3 or 4 inches of snow that they carry on their roofs.
Dales Journey
Since I started writing the nature diary for the Dalesman I’ve been reading up on the history and the natural history of the Yorkshire Dales and, despite sleety, snowy weather, we managed a shore break, staying at Carperby in Wensleydale at the Wheatsheaf, the hotel where James Herriot and his wife spent their honeymoon. I’ve got out of the habit of packing for drawing trips so I printed out a check list that I’d made when we were touring eastern England a few years ago. One of the items on the list was a clutch pencil, not something that I normally think to take with me so when we stopped for lunch in Grassington I gave it a try. It’s probably marginally quicker than pen and the lighter tone brings the sketch nearer to watercolour than my normal pen and wash approach.
There’s a walk across the fields from Carperby to Aysgarth falls, where I sketched again in the Mill Race tea rooms. In the craft shop in the old mill there are photographs of Kevin Costner filming Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves at Aysgarth. The production spent four days here filming the encounter between Robin and Little John and, according to the caption next to the photographs, Costner’s wife had admitted that he was terrified when it came to the fourth day and he had to launch himself backwards several times into the foaming waters of the falls (flowing at 100 m.p.h. according the caption!).
Hawes
We sheltered in the Dales Folk Museum on the Friday, familiarising ourselves with the history of the area and I drew the view from the cafe during our coffee and lunch breaks.
This gave me the chance to return to another medium that I haven’t used much recently; my Pentel Brush Pen. This forces you to work quickly and once dry its waterproof so you can add a watercolour wash.
There wasn’t much opportunity to draw as we made our steady progress around the museum and I found it difficult to choose just one item to sketch before we headed back to Carperby. I wrote;
This Bronze Age cup found at Crayke Farm near Hawes wouldn’t have been of any use to drink from as it is perforated by small holes, as if someone had pricked the clay with a cocktail stick around the base.
Wakefield One
9 March; This morning at Wakefield One, the metropolitan council’s new headquarters, you’re greeted by dancing caymans and wandering minstrels. The smell of freshly cooked medieval food wafts from the booths outside while inside there are the squeaks and occasional pops as balloon are made to order.
I’ve been invited to the opening of the new museum galleries as a thank you for helping out with some of the illustrations for the Charles Waterton exhibit. I squeeze in at the back of the crowd that has gathered on the landing by the library. Some students from Leeds camped out from 5 in the morning to be sure of getting a place but they’ve now had to close the doors to the queues outside.
Standing next to me is a six year old boy wearing a cayman suit.
‘Have you been dancing?’
He’s overawed at the spectacle but his mum explains that no, he wasn’t one of the dancers but when he heard what was happening he insisted on wearing the costume. He reminds me of the boy in Maurice Sendack’s Where the Wild Things Are.
Councillor Box, leader of the council introduces ‘a man who needs no introduction’, Sir David Attenborough.
After the Snow
ALTHOUGH WE’VE had a covering of snow for a little more than a week it’s a revelation to suddenly have colour back in the landscape. The snowdrops have gone to seed during the time that they were covered in a little drift by the pond.
In the wood leaves of bluebells are greening the banks between the trees, while other slopes are still swathed with snow. In the fields on south-facing slopes the weeds and the oilseed rape seedlings are already established. This is a reminder to me that I must now start thinking about sowing seeds in our vegetable beds.
When the thaw gradually got underway a couple of days ago, Biscuit, who had been tramping around discontentedly in the solitary comfort of his snowy field (the two ponies that he was bossing around were his temporary guests and he’s back on his own now) found the first corner of grass to appear by the old shed and lay there in a heap as if he was soaking up the sun on a beach.
His method of getting back up again was remarkably inelegant, pausing halfway for a few minutes in a sitting position more typical of a dog than a pony.
The snow brought not one but two nuthatches to the bird feeders. As far as I remember it’s the first time that we’ve seen two in the garden at once.
The lithe young grey cat who I think of as being a Jerry was shadowing the cock pheasant. The pheasant strutted around with his usual imperious haughtiness but wasn’t unduly concerned. The pair appeared to be more companions than predator and prey but when the pheasant started pecking the bare earth below the feeders the tip of his tail started flick, flick, flicking and the cat adopted a kittenish fascination as if he just couldn’t resist the pheasant teasing him to join in a game.
Drifting
IN DECEMBER I bought myself a copy of The Allotment Year, fully intending to read the summary of jobs for each month and to put as many as I could into practice. Here we are one quarter of the way into the year and I’ve yet to do that. Perhaps April will be the time to start in earnest.
Thanks to the impetus given by having Paul the gardener coming for several morning sessions we did manage to do some of the structural tasks such as replacing the shed but it’s hard to see what I could have done to advance the planting of the vegetable patch when you look out on today’s blanket of snow.
Typically after snow there’ll be a degree of melting, followed by refreezing but this time the snow stayed powdery enough for the wind to blow it into drifts. Not the 15 feet deep drifts that they’ve had in Cumbria and elsewhere but when you tramp down our garden it’s obvious that in the shelter of our house the snow is shallower than it is further down and I think at least some of this reflects where the wind has scoured away and redeposited the powdery snow.
I can imagine that there would be turbulence in the lee of our house with more slack spots further down the garden, sheltered as it is by hawthorn hedges.
I’m glad I made the decision to start feeding the birds again. There are no small mammal tracks around the bird feeders. The largest footprints are those of the pheasants. Other than my size 13s that is.
Late Snow
IT SNOWS on and off through most of the day as we head towards what is predicted to be the coldest March weekend for fifty years. A flock of sixty or more of what I think are redwings heads north-east away from the band of snow that has been making its way up across the Peak District as warm air from the south-west rolls in and meets cold air from Scandinavia.
Later a smaller flock moves in the same direction. Occasional groups of gulls and, at lunchtime, a ragged band of lapwings head in the same direction, away from the snow.
After stopping feeding the birds for a month we’re satisfied that if there are any brown rats around – and we’ve seen no sign of them – it’s not primarily our bird feeders that are attracting them. 
Today great tits, blue tits, robin, siskins, chaffinches, greenfinches and pheasants appreciate the sunflower hearts on offer, each a little burst of energy for them.