Hamlet Hounded by Adorable Avalanche

Hamlet, ‘Hammy boy ham yams’ to friends, enjoys napping on any flat surface between trips outside; where his heavy curtain-pole of a tail corkscrews wildly behind his blundering bottom.

This lack of appendage control has landed Hamlet with the responsibilities of a reluctant father with nowhere to run.

Cornered, sleepy, exhausted after literally minutes of being awake, Hamlet is finally caught and pounced upon by his children: Molly, Bella, Amber, Sproglet, and Avalanche

Pictured: Hamlet, Bella, Avalanche

More pictures of the whole family to come…

Autumn Over Gaunts Estate

Stanbridge Leaves

Leaves over stanbridge

Autumn hit as hard as summer had and so pushed the canopy to oranges and reds so fast it felt like it arrived overnight.

You can picture it happening.

Another burning orange sunset, sat on a black horizon, yet today’s more distant than yesterday, the space between them just great enough to change the timing of the sunset, at just the right angle; resulting in redder sunsets that last longer.

Before this, the greens had been yellowing slowly.

Some had reached orange by now, but even some of the greenest leaves had shed to red overnight.

Once this red autumn curtain falls and becomes a red carpet for winter, branches and tree trunks will steal our hearts for a season and a half.

Wildfires Above Dorset

3400 years is how long it would take to walk to the Sun. Which is the same distance it takes light just 8 minutes to cover. After each light photon first wriggles its way from the core of the source of all life on Earth.

When those photons burst yellow through a widening aperture in the clouds which then opens to a rift of orange, it's a vision of a burning rupture.

A violent looking cataclysm you can feel the real heat of against your own face and it all unfolds in the space of a few minutes.

In this case, these clouds bled sunlight through two punctures. "God rays". More accurately, "crepuscular rays". But here I think "Satan Beams" would be more accurate.

Another theory, which was offered by the Ancient Greeks, is that sunbeams pulled water up into the sky, to explain evaporation.

Some silver lining had clearly kindled and caught fire. Appearing burnt by the sun like paper under a candle.

A Batman shaped hole forms as two terrifying omens merge into a single wound.

The cherry red sun slips from under the black blanket of thick clouds, leaving streaks that glow hot against silhouetted foreground like torn curtains in the windows of a burning tower.

Finally, a glowing yolk evades the pursuing shroud of night time to burn lighter, free from everything but the mist and an imminent horizon.

Pictures of Colourfest 2018 (at Gaunts House in Wimborne, Dorset)

As these pictures of Colourfest 2018 show, Gaunts House in Wimborne was full of vivid signs of rejuvenation, relaxation, and chillness, so we went and ate a lot of very good veggie food.

Honestly, the offerings at the four day long festival are incredible. And everyone is just so happy. Doing yoga in the sunshine together, or dancing in the shadows of ancient trees, else they're relaxing under the sky and laughing.

The gardens of Gaunts House and the landscape of the Common alone are full of enough history and wild nature to fill weeks of adventure, so Colourfest was the perfect oasis to feed our souls and fuel our bellies between exploration.

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I can't imagine a world that can sustain the amount of frogs growing in my pool

Warning, billions of frogs are on their way, once the supercolony of tadpoles in my swimming pool finish transforming into their final forms.

It came in early spring. Goo. Ejected up the sides of the pool, frogspawn, fittingly in the kids end - and then goo became bubbles which became black eyeballs that now wiggle about with tails.

Newts and tadpoles living in a somewhat fragile harmony

Adorable, until one morning, when we see something while passing the stone edge of the pool. On the inner rim of the pool from the top of the murky water to the darkness below, a black rectangle.

The straight edges of it wiggled with a thousand little tails. Once your eyes adjusted, the whole rectangle vibrated. In a fleshy way, while barely reflecting any light, and even more distorted by the water refraction. 

And then we saw two more rectangles of future frogs, wiggling away, munching the algae on the side of the pool. Probably avoiding the newts, though they're too big to fit inside a newt now.

STONEHENGE in the (Rare) Snow // Part 1

Two moments of worship at Stonehenge: druidic song and dance within the ring of ancient stones and quiet solitude outside of them. I danced during both.

Overall, 'rarity' was the theme of the day for me and the few people there, and even the ancient stones themselves. They're blue y'know, I didn't make them look like that. Blue when wet, like when moistened by the rare British snow.

AN absolute hero who kindly shared his mead with us

Imogen being cold

It was one of the very few annual events when you're able to cross the fields and walk among the stones; touch them, lick them if you like, I saw it happen. I even saw a strange man's nipples; no licking involved there.

Yet, the clear sky was rare enough; the snow, rarer. Even just walking among Stonehenge is a very rare opportunity. But all of them together? With a purple sky at dawn and almost no tourists thanks to exaggerated weather alerts? R a r e.

I did all the things you do at Stonehenge, which is description enough. Most of all, we all summoned Spring in, and wished everyone - especially you - the very best in life. Feel free to order this framed print as thanks. Just do it before the snow comes back because I'm not a very good wizard. I do try though.

It's Imogen! (burntgingerrose on Instagram)

Snow in Gaunts, Winter in Wimborne, and "Snowsomnia" in Stanbridge

Fallen Snow on Fallen Branch / Gaunts Common

My body clock is all messed up and has almost reversed since sleeping so damn much this winter. I've been waking up to morning walks that were actually sunsets with my morning coffee, which was really an evening brew. But today, I've been up all night, and real morning leaves me feeling way too tired. I might go to sleep. It's morning for everyone else but the evening for me. Good night morning people.

Stick in the Snow / Gaunts Common

Once a Path / Gaunts Common

Ashton Pool in Winter / Gaunts Common

Insectile Tree / Gaunts Common

I've been tripping (kinda)

I look up so much at the tree canopy that I don't watch my feet and usually trip. Right over. 

I've never broke a camera but I've broken bits of other things. Never a bone. Never a camera. Almost always my phone but it made it through almost a year of being dropped until it cracked and went dark for the last time.

But it was full of a lot of colour. A lot of moments before I tripped over.

Anyone else accident prone?

I've seen pictures on the internet of shattered cameras and expensive equipment laid out like the a half-made jigsaw puzzle but I've not been that unlucky yet.

There's a Bathtub in the Kitchen of this Abandoned Decorative Farmhouse

I thought this place was abandoned until that smile on the face in a window upstairs caught my attention. The stairs inside had completely rotted away so I probably imagined it. Still, the face existed long enough for me to trip over some hay. But I can manage that myself without a pervy ghost.

Inside was pretty creepy but only 50% as scary because upstairs no longer had stairs connected to it. Climbing would be possible but the wood was rotten; the walk back, tiring; and upstairs was probably a corridor of nightmares. I didn't have that sort of time to invest, so I soon bounced.

Kitchen bathtub though. Nice. Functional and ideal for the habitual snacker. Why put your bath in a really cold room when you could be stirring hot pasta with your toes?

Hay was my first clue that the house is decorative. Fresh hay bales from the fields. There was lots of old hay too. I tripped over it just as well as the new stuff. Less bounce, mind.

Old hay with less bounce. Grass, left to die a second time, or to get globbed onto a new pile of hay when it mysteriously appears. Or get used by the local deer that we think live here. Probably as a bed. Aw.

It didn't have a road there. More a dirt path that was torn up with tyre tracks. The type that are terrible to walk along because it's slippery mud with grassy lumps of earth left in the middle. It was a pain to get to and a pain to leave even though it was only just over the hill.

I didn't mean to make it look so creepy. It just was. It felt like an old place that was abandoned quickly but left to rot for a few decades longer. Almost apocalyptic. If it wasn't for the fresh hay I'd have left it alone for all the deer to stay.

Fast movers. Too quick and far away too soon for me to get a picture of. But loads of them sleep here, clearly. I bet they love the hay. Maybe they put the bath there.