Sun between showers

It was a bright morning, so I began the day bright and positive, and although showers moved in by the middle of the day, they alternated with brief periods of bright sunshine illuminating the landscape against my favourite kind of steely sky. In one sunny interval, I walked up the hill. The banks are full of celandines and primroses, and in the wood the wood anemones are in perfect, pink tinged bloom, delicate in the moving shadows. On the hillside the blackthorn blossom is just opening; on the main road, a little lower in the valley, some of it is already fully open. At the top of the hill, where the surfaced lane becomes a rough track, the way was still deep in mud and puddles, and although I picked my way along the edge for a short distance, I had no appetite for the long boot cleaning job which would be needed if I continued as far as the stile into the meadow, but I stood and looked for some time. The group of trees around the hollow in the field are looking less robust and more rotten than ever, with evidence of broken and dead branches, but buds are emerging nonetheless, and the clouds were wonderful, giving constantly shifting light and colour.