Bedtime Stories
Snuggle up and get ready for sleep with these enchanting bedtime stories for your delight.
Natural history has evidently been the writers principal study throughout his life. With his matchless patience and understanding of nature he has the ability to have a profound affect on anyone who reads his stories.
If these little stories delight your mind or you have found some beauty in any word or line then please could you spare a moment to place a comment with your thoughts.
Kind regards, afarawayfellow
NOVEMBER – An Autumn Spectacle
On frosty mornings when the fog veils the fields with an eerie haunting loneliness, there is a spooky ethereal quality as if there is something hidden from me. However. there is no caveat alarm as a pall of grey hangs over the sky, where a thronging of geese, indistinguishable, were exploding into an echo of sound.
jumping jack
Our tallest annual commonly known as Malaysian Balsam was brought here from the Himalayan foothills in the 1800’s, although a non-native, its flowers are adorned by bees. I dearly love to listen to their pulsing sounds as they harvest the white pollen in their baskets. However, the weight of their harvest would sometimes impede their flight and they would succumb to the waiting mouths of the hungry toads beneath.
Every Footstep
I began my journey following a little path which took me to an old churchyard. As I opened the old wooden gate my eyes beheld the most verdant green hedgerows bursting with wildflowers, a rush of fresh country air laced with the aroma of the evening primrose saluted my nose. This place was beyond compare.
The Nature of Flight
Being fully awake and with the soft magic of the half-light dissolved like mist, I stare in slack mouthed silence as squirrels hurriedly ripple across my path, their spines undulating like waves along a skipping rope. They have become startled by the rooks alighting in the great oak tree. Rooks have a more discerning scent and lead a flock of starlings to an area rich in food. They have a more delicate feel in their beaks enabling them to detect food from a greater distance so have formed a beneficial relationship with the starlings, the rooks also acting as a ‘look out’ for predators on open ground which can be readily observed.
the nature of time
I have often wondered about the nature of time, we can’t see it or touch it, yet it’s there every moment of our lives. Time is the most precious thing we are given on earth.
In the Parlance of Time
A storm had gathered during the night with torrential rain, the lightning illuminating the clouds. Through closed eyelids, the on off of the lightning gave a near continuous picture followed with snake-like wriggles spilling and tumbling in a couple-coloured sky. In the parlance of time, I had longed for scenes like this, as I in childhood sweetly slept, full of thoughts unborn. By mid-morning the storm had ceased, and the sun began to split the clouds, I could hear the rustle of the wind in the trees close by and the land with rain was now rinsed. As I followed the sounds everything was descending earthwards, leaves, twigs and acorns, across the cedrous bank the old mossed cottage trees were bent with apples, their fragrance and ripeness filled to the core.
Idle Thoughts
Little Maverick would always greet me with a stretch and a yawn, bound across and sit to attention with his head in the air, waiting eagerly to be patted and told what a good boy he really is, then with demi-pause he rises and runs to the door. With keen anticipation we make our way across the fields to the rhynes and ditches where my ear catches the sound of a male blackcap and I garner the quality of his song. As I caretake in the moment I immerse myself into the landscape. All the while Maverick rests easy watching the moorhens with their ingratitude of chicks, feeding diligently on a smorgasbord of scattered food. Suddenly from the reeds, Stumpy the rat joins the throng. With his three paws down, he wobbles around feasting himself on the tasty delights.
against all odds
When we enter a beautiful woodland setting, we are then caught in a moment of admiration; one that is capable of lifting our spirits, touching emotions that lie deeper and are more meaningful to us than almost anything else in life.
Once upon a Dream
In the windless noon, the flaunt of the sunshine on this sultry day and the cirrus clouds above help to absorb the moment’s meaning. As I observe the sights and soundscapes, I gaze across the daisied meadow watching the motionless eye-winking cattle basking in the sun.
SEPTEMBER -The Mysterious Season of mist and Spiders
It was a sultry day after the sun had drunk the dew. The hedges in the hedgerow had been studiously fretted trim. But there, woven between the dew-laden branches were festoons of spider’s webs, far more than previous years, where the dew drops hung trembling on the translucent whisps, enhancing their beauty. There the spider will be waiting, just out of sight, and with the slightest vibration she will come to seize. They are resilient intricate artists and are adorned with many skills.
little boy blue
On many of our adventures whether on pathless woods or where the waves break on a low sandy shore, Blue and I would settle a while. Blue is my trusty Blue Roan Cocker Spaniel. He would sit on his haunches with a morose appearance watching his master. A watchful sleepy eye would appear and analyse the footsteps, creaks and sounds around him. Blue stood slack but ready, his smooth narrow head flickered as he shifted his gaze, his growls grew more menacing, his eyes becoming fixed in their stare.
against all odds
When we enter a beautiful woodland setting, we are then caught in a moment of admiration; one that is capable of lifting our spirits, touching emotions that lie deeper and are more meaningful to us than almost anything else in life.
Blue’s Countryside Adventures
As Blue and I enter a narrow country lane where finger posts and forgotten milestones are half hidden amongst the wild grasses and where dandelions are blowing abound with seed, Blue relishes the incomparable pleasure of discovery. As I look up at the watery sky I watch the blue arrows team of swallows swerving and swooping picking off insects as they go. I can hear in the distance the sound of ‘Great Tom’ the famous church bell of St. Thomas and The Holy Rood, what a wonderful sound he makes with a head, shoulder, a waist, a lip and a mouth but also a wonderful voice.
MINDFULNESS – The Artist’s Way
In the cloudless blue coloured sky, I watched a crow and a buzzard rise way up high, they then fought a spiralling duel, with the buzzard making all the noise as they continued to carve the sky. Finally, they disappeared into the silhouetted woods, for the wise old crow knew the buzzard’s menacing intentions and had taken the buzzard away from his nesting site.
One Moonlit Night
Through a little gate at the bottom of the garden is a buttercup meadow, where a fox I named Finbar often frequented. He was aware of my presence as I felt his stare, but knowing my scent had no fear of me. I watched as he stretched out his length in the sunshine, I could see his long ears and his elliptical eyes. I named him Finbar, for a name makes a difference, be it a person or an animal, don’t deal with them as strangers.
Thunderheads and Lightning
It was now early July, the morning was fine, the sky blue, and the clouds below like fluffy white balls of cotton. The lane was awash with the great willowherb, a splash of pinkish mauve amongst the tall umbellifers. There was an abundance of golden yellow ragwort, this plant being the distain of many, but not for the ephemeral wings of the cinnabar moth who rears her yellow and black striped caterpillars on this tenacious plant.
robin’s betrothal
Our beautiful robins become engaged in January and marry at the end of March. The male presents her with a courtship present, a tiny grub, a love gift to prove his feelings for her. If she accepts his gift the days of engagement are over and the serious work of married life begins.
galleries and umtitumps
In the early summer, when the hedgerows are white with May (the blossom of the hawthorn), the scent of which is heavy upon the breeze, and the birds singing lustily above, the spirit of the times is felt even underground by the mole—the blind miner whose senses are so keen it triggers him to start breeding in earnest.
AUGUST – The Mute Season
It is now early August, the lanes and the woods are silent, without the pellucid sound of birds singing. Only the yellowhammers in the hedgerows are with song. In the skies above the cries of the buzzards can be heard. This is the time when birds begin their summer moult to replace their suit of feathers ready for the harshness of winter.