When it stopped raining

Just as I left the house, the sun came out. I looked across the valley from the road, and loved this brilliantly lit landscape, with the astonishing green of winter fields and the orangey red of the bare willow branches, against the stormy blue sky. Our orchard fence runs down the left of the photo, with the willow thicket at the bottom. This is my first Wide Wednesday photo for a while, though it's probably questionable whether it shows "nature": it's countryside shaped by human activity, particularly agriculture, with a pattern of fields, orchards, roads and tracks and hedgerows which go back many centuries. However, the downs landscape with its woodland, flora and fauna still seems part of the natural world, in contrast to the built environments of towns, cities and even the hub of the village.

At present the ground is far too saturated and muddy for me to stray off the lanes, so my walk up the lane to the top of the hill behind me could not be part of a circular route. I returned to help J with her exercise bike session and her lunch, after which we made a cake. It should have been the long promised yule log, but the sad demise of my ancient mixer meant I wasn't willing to embark on a recipe requiring lots of whisked egg whites; instead, we made our usual celebration chocolate sponge from a wet, batter based recipe which needs relatively little mixing, with chocolate ganache frosting. It has turned out quite well, by my standards: both halves came out of the tins more or less intact, and the ganache was soft enough to spread but firm enough to stay on the cake without running down the sides. J's PA M had her birthday today, so we will eat cake with her before she leaves tomorrow afternoon.