Autumn continues to amaze and delight us all here in our little house in the Vallee d'Ossau. Every day is a little different as the vegetation, the weather and the climate all change, interact and produce a continuing display of altering colour, shape, shadow, light and atmosphere. Leaves are falling quickly now, each snow fall and windy day brings them down in masses of colour. Consequently the colour is lower down now - on the floor of the forest and it is brown with a deep layer of soft leaves. The trees are skeletons and the forest is becoming transparent, other colours appear through the bare trees. Frost and snow add another dimension. The fresh, cold weather has ensured that frost keeps the ground white all day on the northern slopes and close to the edges of tree belts. The sun is lower now all day and the light on some days is soft, edges are indistinct and shadows are long.
The shadows of the trees are lines on the ground, well gone are the full dark shadows of summer that so delighted us on warm days. The autumn shadows are colder and longer, traces on the ground of the bones of the trees. The sun follows the peaks across the sky, staying low and ensuring the bases of the northern slopes never see the sun. The frost stays here all day and in the late afternoon as the sun is setting the frost here is still glowing white - cold places, the northern slopes. The stock naturally move to the southern slopes.
The sheep are only in the fields during the middle of the day now, they are taken out in the morning and return to their warm granges in the mid afternoon. A large mob of horses came down from Col d'Aubisque and through the streets of Beost across the valley yesterday. The horses are the last to leave the mountains as the snow settles.
No comments:
Post a Comment