We are inveterate Sky Watchers.

Aren't all farmers? And although we no longer farm the habit now lends morning pleasure and evening delights.

In the evening Charles watches to the South and the East, while I keep my eye on the setting sun. In the morning the breakfast room faces the East and we are usually up for the show. But sometimes in the midst of summer, as the sun rises further and further to the north, we waken to a beautiful golden glow at the bedroom window.

We have been so fortunate in this Valley to have always been situated where we can view the sky at its most spectacular, or its tenderest. Where we lived down by the river the Valley narrowed to the West and some of the most amazing sunsets made our hearts skip. I would stand out in the pastures with my camera, hardly knowing which way to turn as the whole dome of heaven varied from vivid reds to warmest pink and peach. And it changes so fast, from second to second.



At the farm I can remember evenings when the very air was golden, and it felt as if you were floating through light......

Last night the hills in Cawston were bathed in a crimson light. The camera said yes, yes, - but you had to be there to truly experience it.




And sometimes there isn't any colour at all, - it is only the amazingly beautiful cloud formations - white against the blue of the sky, as if the tables of heaven were being laid with Delft.



A winter sunrise, full of colour, is a stranger here where we do not see the fiery sun rising over the distant flat horizon, as I did in my childhood on the prairies.
But the mountains and the shadows of the hills enhance them even more when they deign to come.



Here is a lovely soft April evening sky.....



It reminds me of the song we sang so many years ago -" All in the April Evening "- and I see in my mind's eye the sheep and their little lambs on the hills at the farm, and I remember fondly the people who sang it with us - so many years ago when we were so very young....