Tomorrow we can try again, again. Every day is New Year's Day.

My sky at dawn. Good morning from Marbury.

I'm driving home. A pheasant walks towards me up the verge and steps into the road. He stops in the middle of the carriageway. I stop and we look at each other. I want to say "you don't have to do that". He blinks, and moves to the side. I drive on. In the mirror I see him step back into the road.

There seems to have been a glitch in the matrix: I routinely get between zero and 4 interactions on anything I post here, but this week 2 posts between them generated nearly 1,000 interactions. Things are now back to normal, thank goodness. I don’t really expect anyone to be looking at what I post.

Good morning from misty Marbury.

Morning mist in all the hollows. Moraine country. Good morning from Marbury. #Cheshire #sunrise

I am a dog My life is small And most of it Is you. #dog #poem #DogSky

Goldfinch, honeysuckle, Bramble, nettle, crow. Far away a tractor, and a flock of gulls. A gentle breeze. The sun, shaded for a moment by a tiny cloud. A sleeping dog. A butterfly. A frog leaps into Basho’s pond. Then silence. The sun emerges from its cloud. I turn back to my book. #DailyNature

If you let one star, however small, come too close, It hides all the rest.

Frost on the windscreen, Cold mist along the canal. Autumn has arrived.

A Sunday #shelfie from Longfellow to DouglasAdams via some poems by Clive James, and a few other favourites. #BookSky #Books #Library #AmReading

I bought a book! I have so many books, and such a small house, that I have slowed down my book-buying over the years, and to buy a novel is quite a novelty for me nowadays. Will this one be worth it? I’m a bit picky! #books #amreading #BookSky

When you know you are really on an adventure. The map app can’t find a way home. Is this the important art of becoming lost? Reminds me of Rebecca Solnit’s book that I used to teach the students with.

Thought I’d lost a book today. The arrangement of bookshelves is a very personal affair. My “Herzog Nosferatu” wasn’t where I expected next to Brautigan’s “Hawkline Monster”, but had been ridiculously misplaced between Marquez and Kundera. Madness. #BookSky #library #books #reading

The manufacturer of my vacuum cleaner seems to be from the Harry Potter school of engineering.

I’ve been away but now I’m back. Good morning from Marbury. This is the field at the end of my lane, by the canal.

This morning we are waiting on a decision about whether our small plane will fly in the high winds today. Here’s hoping so.

#MyFirstBirdOfTheDay - moorhen and ducks, in the wind and rain at Lower Moors in #Scilly

One for my coastal geomorphology and granite landforms friends. Pulpit Rock, St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly. (Also for the cheap-and-cheerful surveyors who can work out the height of the camera relative to the rock!)

Bits the Collie ignoring the gale to keep her eyes firmly fixed on the spot where she expects Debbie to appear in a minute! #dogsky #collie

Schrödinger’s opening hours at Juliet’s Garden. The restaurant is both open and closed. I will henceforth refer to it always as “Schrödinger’s Garden”. Also, I won’t.

It was a pleasure to meet @northantsbirding.bsky.social en route to Scilly. Here is a rare sighting of @marburybirds.bsky.social in her trademark yellow wellies with him on the deck of The Scillonian.

This notice doesn’t show Marazion Town Council in a very good light. Where to begin… the grammar, the ecology…? Nice lichens, though, except for being covered up by that sign.

Penzance, from Marazion.

Road Trip. It’s unusual for me to be anywhere far from home, nowadays, but we’re not in Marbury this evening!

Early this morning Before the colours came on Along the canal.

A “gotcha day” snap to celebrate Bits being with us for a whole year now! #DogSky

Good morning from Marbury.

Here’s an interesting #DailyNature fact to accompany my early-morning rainbow picture from today’s first walk: the lower the sun is in the sky, the taller and rounder the rainbow. Midday rainbows are flatter and lower. Dawn and sunset rainbows are more complete semi-circles.

Down today's internet rabbit hole I found myself doing a lesson in how to speak Blackfoot language. Máátohkoikiiwa. learnblackfoot.ca/mod1les1.htm

I’m making pancakes.

Views looking straight up at my sky and straight down at my Bridgedale socks. Perhaps, as well as alt text, we should accompany every photo with straight up and straight down shots for context! And, yes, I have become the kind of person who has a preferred brand of sock. I always wear Bridgedale.

Do you know the collective noun for meltwater ponds? It's "sadness". A sadness of meltwater ponds. #climatechange #seaice #Arctic

Millions of snowflakes, Each weighing less than an ounce, Working together, Sticking to the plan, Sank the Titanic.

Good morning from Marbury. It’s a lovely morning but the sky is telling us that there’s weather coming in from the west! #clouds #sky #weather #DailyNature

Good morning from Marbury. My #sky this morning.

The importance of a healthy breakfast. Today we had fresh cream Victoria sponge cake smothered in fresh cream trifle with custard. #nutrition #healthyeating All the key food groups are here.

#haikufeels They punctured the sky On the day they let me out. It rained for six weeks.

Silent on the cut Between this bridge and that one, With the Kingfishers. #morning #haiku #canal

#haikufeels (trap) You'll see it at dawn. There's a trap door in the sky Where they put the stars.

Time for a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake. Good afternoon from Marbury, everyone.

Good morning from Marbury. #DailyNature walking in the #countryside around the village. #Cheshire

Even when they are dry and not shiny, freshly turned fields remind me of Gerard Manley Hopkins and how “sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine”. One of my favourite and most revisited poems. (The Windhover).

One of my favourite souvenir lumps of rock. I back-packed it out from my Greenland field site in nineteen eighty something. It was freshly broken out of gneiss bedrock by an outburst flood so one side is fresh and the other is the glacially smoothed outer face. It’s about 8 inches (20cm) across.

Good morning from Marbury. My sky this morning. #sky #clouds #goodmorning #dailynature

From my window In the countryside This afternoon. #dailynature (sort of) The view from my study.

Doc the Collie pauses by the “Jesus Loves You” stone to chew a stick and reflect on the nature of being.

My former students who did the "what can I see through the window" exercise with me might appreciate the fact that my last-ever academic publication with Keele as my affiliation, which has just come out, is called: "Through the window – embedding micro-fieldwork activity into classroom teaching."

One of the fun things about sending off for 2nd-hand books (with apologies to the authors regarding their royalties but with an eye on the environment) is when they come with marks of their former lives: in this case as a library book in Kent! Thanks to @goldishcj4.bsky.social for the tip.

The last ever publication of mine that will have Keele as my affiliation has just been published. Ironically, it seems I can't see a copy of it unless I buy the £140 book that it is part of! That kind of craziness is one of the reasons I was happy to leave academia! #academia #academic #publishing