The new month and New Year seem to have brought with them new temperatures! Here on the Lincolnshire marshes the air is now bitingly cold and the thermometer is showing daytime readings only just above zero. The birds clear all the food I now give them twice daily, always a sign that things are pretty tough for them out there. After all the busyness of Christmas, January brings calm, and an opportunity to look ahead and take stock. The calendars newly hung, with birthdays and other milestone...

Living on the flat Lincolnshire coastal marsh, the sunrise, its timing and position is an ever-present part of my journey through each year. Almost as far as it can be from its summer place, the sunrise now it fills my kitchen window with its wild pink brilliance. The Pagan feast of Yule, celebrating the turning wheel of the year, as we move from darkness to light, sits easily alongside Christmas, both appearing in the strange darkness of December; a time full of mystery and merrymaking.   I...

November has dawned bright and breezy here.  We are close to the Donna Nook Nature Reserve, a six mile coastal strip which in November and December hosts a colony of seals. They come ashore to give birth to their fluffy white pups, which can be seen clearly from the viewing path. We hear their plaintive cries on cold mornings when sound travels farther; a reminder, along with teatime sunsets, and well-stocked log baskets, that we are coming towards Christmas and the close of the year.  ...