Snowy Shropshire

The snow transformed Shropshire into a magical winter wonderland, blanketing the fields in white, icing branches and fences with a layer of glittering frosty snow and, even as I write, the hilltops and field edges are still highlighted in wintry white – although a smudge of snow and a carrot are all that is left of our snowman!

There’s something hypnotic about watching snowflakes falling – each one a tiny unique crystal different from the rest, softly fluttering to the ground and gradually, relentlessly, changing brown and green to dazzling white.

The snow brings lots of hungry birds to our bird table.  Coming into the warm with frozen fingers after feeding the birds, there’s something really satisfying about watching them enjoy the peanuts and seed cake – and sipping water from a birdbath you have just thawed out.

All the places I have written about this year will look very different in the snow to the photographs I took – Grinshill, Audlum, Brown Moss, Wollerton Garden, Stokesay Castle – but at all of them there is a touch of magic in every season – even in the darkest days of the year – a robin singing, the scent of a late winter rose, bright red holly berries – if you stop for a moment – use all your senses – you can feel the magic of life around you.

All of us suffer sadness at some time in our lives.  Sometimes that sadness is hard to dispel and that’s when Today’s Treasures can help – finding something lovely in every day and enjoying that moment with all your senses.

A kind word, a thoughtful act – a smile for a stranger – is sometimes all it takes to bring sunshine to someone’s life – and make them feel better.

Wishing you all many moments to treasure in 2018.

Published in the January edition of the Whitchurch gossip