Chalk Pit Hill

It's the time of the year when flails are mounted on tractors to cut back the hedges, a task which needs to be carried out regularly on lanes as narrow as this one. It's a fairly brutal machine, which hacks and tears off the most recent growth, leaving mangled stems and sharp, broken twigs and branches. However, I've learned that new growth will soon soften the outlines again.

My imaginative response to this week's Mono Monday sharp/blunt theme didn't get much beyond the cutlery drawer, but I hoped my pre-lunch walk around the village might show me some sharp flints or blunt pebbles. Looking up Chalk Pit Hill, I was struck by the sharply defined edges and the sharp ends of the cut and broken twigs, contrasting with the blunt shape of the sculpted hedgerow, the curve of the lane and the softness of the hillside trees. 

It was a chilly and grey walk: the weather has turned cold and wintery again for the past few days and I'm back in my big jacket and woolly hat. J was hopeful that we might see the aurora borealis, which seems to have been visible much further south than usual in the past couple of days, but it was far too cloudy here for it to be worth going outside. Indoors, we started a bit of animation, some short black and white transition sequences for a film being made by the group at her care centre. There's more to do, but it's a manageably small project, which is what she needs at present.