small observations and ramblings
Aug. 7th, 2009 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bonny_kateThe clouds move faster in England. Here, it is unusual to watch the sky and be able to tell the clouds are moving, relative to a tree or such. But in England the clouds are always skimming across the sky, and there is no need to compare them to anything stationary. To stare up at a building, you must be careful, or you will quickly find yourself dizzy because the building feels like it is falling, but it is only the clouds. But because the weather moves so quickly, it may be sunny and half an hour later it may be pouring rain, until it clears again in half an hour. You can watch the storm clouds coming, and watch them swept away. We joked that the forecast was never sunny with a chance of rain, but overcast with a chance of sun. There were a few nights we were away from the cities, and city lights, but it was never clear enough to see the stars.
Because it rains so much it is so very green everywhere. Everything is green, and a brilliant, vibrant green (unlike our dusty California green; we have not seen rain in months), and what is not green is living gold. The rolling hills are shades of green square fields edged in dark green hedges, with deep green trees, or dark green bushes lining the road most places (making it difficult to take a picture, because the fields can only be glimpsed, not often directly seen). Some of the fields are living gold, pale gold (I dare not call it yellow, it is too beautiful for that), with touches of red, and green underneath; living gold because it has once been alive, and will be again. It looks exactly like the Shire. Some of the country roads wend their way under living archways, the trees squared off at the shoulder and above, the sunlight turning green under the canopy, and the rain falling in loud, occasional splatters instead of constant drops. There is no shoulder on much of these roads (two lanes wide), and occasionally no stripes. Instead, the hedge comes nearly to the edge of the road (I scraped the car with the branches on the left a time or two), or the trees are nearly to the edge, or the wall of stacked thin stones. Sometimes there is four inches of road beyond the white line, sometimes a bit more, and sometimes there is even a bit of green grass before the inevitable hedge. I wondered what I should do if the car broke down, because there is nowhere to go. These roads are never straight for very long, but are the rolling English road that Chesterton writes about, that rambles round the shire.
Because it rains so much it is so very green everywhere. Everything is green, and a brilliant, vibrant green (unlike our dusty California green; we have not seen rain in months), and what is not green is living gold. The rolling hills are shades of green square fields edged in dark green hedges, with deep green trees, or dark green bushes lining the road most places (making it difficult to take a picture, because the fields can only be glimpsed, not often directly seen). Some of the fields are living gold, pale gold (I dare not call it yellow, it is too beautiful for that), with touches of red, and green underneath; living gold because it has once been alive, and will be again. It looks exactly like the Shire. Some of the country roads wend their way under living archways, the trees squared off at the shoulder and above, the sunlight turning green under the canopy, and the rain falling in loud, occasional splatters instead of constant drops. There is no shoulder on much of these roads (two lanes wide), and occasionally no stripes. Instead, the hedge comes nearly to the edge of the road (I scraped the car with the branches on the left a time or two), or the trees are nearly to the edge, or the wall of stacked thin stones. Sometimes there is four inches of road beyond the white line, sometimes a bit more, and sometimes there is even a bit of green grass before the inevitable hedge. I wondered what I should do if the car broke down, because there is nowhere to go. These roads are never straight for very long, but are the rolling English road that Chesterton writes about, that rambles round the shire.