Phenology - December

FIRST FROST!!

Well good grief, we are getting a proper winter at last.

Not that I am a fan of cold. I'm not really a fan of December at all. Carols laud the holly and the ivy because there is barely any other foliage left to notice:

As we head toward the dark of the Winter Solstice the only compensating features of natural interest are to be found above the earth, not on it. There are sometimes wonderful long winter twilights, where the sky stays blue over a greeny-brown streak of atmospheric pollution at the horizon, and the lacy black silhouettes of trees are etched against the light.

I love those. Tree anatomy, clothed for so long by foliage, is wonderfully striking when bared to view like that.

And sometimes, even more rarely, there are magnificent dawns:

But damn, I hate the mud.