What a wonderful world.

Hello and welcome to the latest blog of the Olivia Rose Diaries on January 15th 2022.

Winter has arrived and the temperatures have plummeted here in France this week. We’re down to minus six at night, waking up to freezing fog which sometimes persists for the whole day. However, if the sun does manage to burn it off, by the afternoon we can sit outside for a cup of tea, albeit still wrapped in a coat for warmth. When it doesn’t break through we huddle next to the fire and dream of the spring!

But what a wonderful world we are waking up to, the fantastical world of a hoar frost where everything looks magical, where even the most mundane of things are transformed into a work of art.

I’ve been in a bit of a photographical frenzy this morning, wandering round the garden of our new house-sit where there are so many things that draw my eye that I hardly know which way to turn.

Spiders webs have turned into white lacework, draped artfully over bushes, strung between fence posts or clinging to the rusty remnants of old tools.

Leaves have raided their winter wardrobe and put on a glorious fashion show, some wearing coats of tiny daggers of  ice, others content to be more modest with just a scarf, a sugar coating around their edges. Around the pond the ornamental grasses explode like a white firework display. 

Ordinary objects like a wooden bench turn soft and furry and even the garden ornaments get a makeover.

This is when I love winter, so different from warm, wet, grey and gloomy days that suck all the life out of the landscape. On days like today the world and all its troubles fade away and life shrinks down to the chill of the freezing air on your cheeks and the miracle of a blade of grass coated in ice. Sometimes this is all we need.  A wonderful world indeed.

Take care

MJ