Snow and Silence

Hi, I took a drive out to the country today to see how work is progressing on the two small houses on the same largish property in the country that a friend and I are having renovated (more here). Things are moving along relatively smoothly so all's well there.

Having checked the work there wasn't much else to do elsewhere and outside because it has snowed recently and the ground is frozen. So I took a few pictures because the snow looked pretty out there in the fields. Here are three of them.

 This was taken from the terrace of one of the houses. Garden in front of it, veggie garden next, behind the first fence, and there will probably be a couple of donkeys in the field beyond that. It all looked so peaceful and there wasn't a sound to be heard anywhere in the cold thin air....

Here's a view over to the left. The rather ramshackle outhouses (want of a better word?) were chicken coops in the past and there's a lot of clearing up to do both in and around them. One of them shall be welcoming new chickens and fresh eggs when the big move from Lyon comes, towards next summer. There's a field on the far side of the coops, its future use as yet undecided.

As I said earlier, it was quite cold although at -5C it was bearable but still, it was cold enough to freeze the water dripping down off a disused rain gutter. I took this photo because I liked the various shades and qualities of the blacks and whites and greys. The gutter, the bushes, the sky, the snow, the translucent icicle...

I know there are many more colours to be seen during spring, summer and autumn, much more life and energy too, but I appreciate the sort of solitary peace and calm that winter imposes and that nature must wait through patiently while winter does its cold, hard and lonely work of quietly preparing the land to receive each new year's plants and crops.....