Will winter ever come?

Last Sunday I had a quick pootle around Langley Wood NNR, to catch the last of the autumnal colours and see my favourite, magnificent beech tree. Although it was raining, and the daylight was fading fast, it was, as always, very atmospheric.

Then, when out in the garden recently, I noticed that the garlic I had recently planted was sprouting, and is now several inches high - crazy!

This comes after an extremely-mild week - I was in London on Tuesday on a training course, and I was trying to explain to them my job, and what the greatest threat facing our planet is - i.e. climate change. They were staggered that it was already impacting on communities (both people and ecosystems) around the world, and had no idea that, as well as the USA and China, that Australia was such a bad polluter and consequent contributor to the atmospheric changes. So, I feel I've done my little bit for raising awareness this week.

It was a much more wintry day yesterday - clear, sunny skies (after initial rain showers - the edge of Abigail or whatever they're calling the latest storm!) - so I headed up to the Ox drove by the racecourse again - this time venturing further along it to a little loop amongst woodland on the Wilton Estate. Although it wasn't a very long walk (an hour or so), I love the feeling you get when you're covering new ground (I had a map with me, unlike the previous times in Bentley Wood - see other posts...). The view back to the edge of the Nadder valley (opposite side to the Ebble) w


as beautiful.

So, I live in hope that at some point we might actually have winter, but this mild weather has really worried me and is quite probably a sign of things to come. Of course, the irony is that I won't be using the heating as much, thereby reducing my own carbon emissions...