Deborah Vass

If there is one thing that defines this period for me it is the birdsong.  The air seemed full of their full throated joy: the Robin, the Bl

This Spring I became smitten with tulips and here I explain how I became beguiled by these elegant beauties.

Woods I part the out thrusting branches and come in beneath the blessed and the blessing trees. Though I am silent there is singing around me. Though I am dark there is vision around me. Though I am heavy there is flight around me. Wendell Berry There is a whisper of spring is in the air, and such days are to be eagerly seized. It is weeks since I have been able to walk out onto the fen and draw. Seemingly endless days of dark and cold and rain have made it forbidding, but t

I love winter. I love crisp, bright days, the low light of December and the tracings of branches across the sky; but this winter has been testing. Seemingly endless, dull, dreich days have sapped me and I am ready for the ‘green fuse’ of spring. Yesterday was one of those rare sunlit days and I went for a wander to Thelnetham fen in search of signs of spring. I could hear the rallying ‘tea –cher’ of the Great Tit and a wren was briskly flitting among the alder roots, bristlin