Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.

I wonder if Sinclair Lewis (American novelist) had horses?

The very same thought about winter was running through my head this morning as I broke the ice on no fewer than seven water tanks across the fields and wondered why I'd chosen to wear fingerless gloves.

The ice was the result of a very heavy overnight frost, not even any snow.

(Please note, I am not AT ALL complaining. With two of my boys living in Canada, the cold season in Sussex is just a pathetic excuse for winter.)

I know how lucky I am.

Beautiful animals. Beautiful scenery.

And beautiful weather!

As Robert Byrne says “Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours.”

Good old nature.

Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.

...especially if you have horses. By the way, I'm not complaining because I love it - but it IS hard work sometimes. Perhaps Sinclair Lewis was complaining? He'd be complaining all the more if he knew I hadn't heard of him AND he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930...

Back to the horses. Lately we've had all the weather winter could throw at us except heavy snow (which I won't write too loudly. You never know who might be listening.)

For a start, at 7 a.m. when I arrive at the yard - it's dark.

We've had howling gales and slashing rain. This translates into...the sand school's a lake, there's lots of mud, and frisky horses with sodden rugs to change. And riding's not much fun.

Storm horse by Zeelis Tech of Android Zoom

 We've had icy conditions - which means frozen windscreen, frozen fingers and toes, head collars with rigor mortis, frozen drinking troughs, treacherous roads. And riding's not much fun.

Ice horse by Cisco of Queeky

And today...we have sunshine.

And riding was a great deal of fun.

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.

Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show...

Andrew Wyeth's The Hunter

And Andrew Wyeth's quote. I love his work. It poses so many questions. Fascinating and beautifully bleak.

 It's come to me that I could look at his pictures for inspiration for my writing. I want my stories to have layers of meaning like that - something waiting beneath.

Winter 1945

I could weave such stories...

I came to know the work of Andrew Wyeth through my mother. She was a wonderful painter but she would always, always copy other people's work. I never once saw her letting her imagination break loose. I often wondered why.

Her very best piece hangs in our bedroom and it's this:

Christina's World

"The woman in the painting is Christina Olson. She suffered from polio, a muscular deterioration that paralyzed her lower body. Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when through a window from within the house he saw her crawling across a field."

My mum should have made her living as a forger of Fine Art!