FIRE BRIGHT MOMENTS

  There are moments in life, when you look at something you've seen many times before but suddenly you think about it in a different way. I had one of those moments today. 
Over the last few days we have had really low, heavy cloud cover which, on top of the clocks changing has made the days feel dark and depressing. Everyone has been moaning about the weather and saying how low and fed up they feel. Even the dog has been down in the dumps and fed up, which is unusual for him, so I took him with me in the afternoon to a garage I use some miles away, to get a problem with the car suspension checked out.

  My moment came when I drove over the crest of a hill and looking down at the scene below me, the sides of the valley were just ablaze with fire-bright colours of mixed deciduous trees and it looked as though the sun was shining brightly on the world below, yet the skies were dark and foreboding as another heavy front headed up the valley.

  It was then that I was even more grateful for autumnal colour than I think I've ever been. I realised that had the trees around here had not been so colourful, we would have felt even more darkly depressed. Just the sight of those blazes of wonderful colour contrasting with the lead heavy skies, lifted me out of my doldrums for the rest of the day.

Taken a few days later

Unable to stop to take any photographs, due to the pouring rain, I carried on driving.

  However, in the late afternoon the skies lightened, so, out with the dog in one of the lighter showers of the day, I found an interesting looking footpath not far from the garage

beyond this newly built stone wall, the space opened up and was full of brightness & light 

It was incredibly muddy, sludgy and churned up, the trees damply overhanging the path...

but beyond the larch coned curtain, the pathway opened up to a blaze of autumnal colour

The dog enjoyed exploring the new scents, I enjoyed the scenery, a happier end to the day!