Three Beautiful Things

This post at The Refrigerator Oracle -- Open Your Eyes!  -- is a good one for all 3BTers. 1. Frost ferns covered the empty milk bottles huddled on our doorstep -- the snow has defeated our milkman since Monday. Today I wake to the dull clunk of Nick bringing two full bottles into the house. 2. The first Christmas card, hand delivered. 3. Over the wall in the neighbour's bird feeding tree, I spot what looks like a thrush -- but there's something slightly off about it. It lifts a wing and displays a russet patch -- oh,  a redwing , of course. I hope it has spotted the pyracanthus berries over the road.                                    

1. Lines of paddy paw prints over the snowy carpark clue me in on the night life. 2. The doorbell rings. The triumphant Abel and Cole man hands over our veggie box. 3. Each cluster of pale orange rowan berries is weighed down by snow. The high branches are weighed down by feasting wood pigeons.

1. "Sort of skulking?" "Yes, and picking bits out from between the paving stones." "That's a dunnock ." Another of our home birds identified. 2. My parents' neighbour has four turkeys in a pen in the woods. They are pleased to see us and come to the fence to show off their green-black plumage. One of the males fans out his tail for us. 3. He brings his great dane puppy out to meet us. Its colour makes me think of a batch of biscuits -- pale gold to soft tan. He says its spent the short afternoon testing the boundaries of his garden.

1. Blackbird's alarm call. Newton's cradle . 2. Nick finds me gasping and retching in the kitchen, breakfast half set out. He rubs my back and says: "My brave girl." Later, he takes the fish pan that I can't bear to look at out and scrapes it into the compost bin outside. 3. Dog let off the lead chases after a magpie. The bird launches into the air, making the same ratchetting alarm call that disturbed me this morning. Ha ha.

1. The woods. The shady side of the street. Our flat. Very much welcome on a hot day. 2. She says: "Thanks for telling me this Prosecco is sweeter than Champagne. I wouldn't have tried it otherwise." 3. Daredevil swifts shriek over our hill. They fall, now skyward, now earthward. Always falling.

1. Sandwich -- apple and Lancashire cheese. 2. Carrot matchsticks light up my risotto. 3. I show Nick the Springwatch webcams . "I bet you've been on here all day," he says, unable to take his eyes off the brood of blue tits.

1. Sparrows are sitting on gables and in the angles of downpipes. Their screeches are like London street cries: "'Ave a late. 'Ave a late." "Free fer a pahnd. Free fer a pahnd." "Real leaver! Come on ladies, it's all real leaver." 2. I tell the chiropractor that I'm fine -- but then she starts work, and I realise that I've been holding my breath. 3. Nick is late home -- but I'm napping and oblivious.

1. To swim outdoors. 2. Our laburnum tree is out -- this time last year, I was sad that we wouldn't see its pure yellow flowers again. It's one good thing about the flat sale taking so long. 3. We walk down through the woods on the Common. Bird song falls all around us. A robin scatters notes from a blunt dead oak branch

1. The lady who lives over the road stops to talk to the blackbird on her fence. He's very bold. 2. To see a friend driving up the hill towards me. She has dropped by to see if I was in. I wasn't, but I am now (nearly). 3. I go to see The Winslow Boy and run into Anke and Mrs Anke . There is an empty seat beside them, so I hop down two rows to join them: "Like a mongoose," says Anke. The play is excellent -- lots of subtle laughs, issues to chew over and characters to sympathise with. I thought the boy was particularly good, wavering between child and man.

1. Through the post comes a fat envelope of free seeds from the BBC's Dig In project. At the end of the day, when all my work is done, I start to plant them up. 2. I interview the playwright John Godber because one of his shows, Men of the World is coming to Trinity next month . He has a soft Yorkshire accent that I like very much indeed. When I transcribe my shorthand, I enjoy hearing it all over again in my head. "It's a very human activity, of humans re-enacting history for other humans to watch." His humans are pronounced  yewman. 3. There are two blue tits that share the feeder in the rowan tree. They are small enough to work at it together; or sometimes one sits on a nearby branch and waits patiently for the other to finish. I love the way they share, as well as their bright lime-rind yellows and sky blues.

1. After a sleepless night, to get up and do the work that has been keeping me awake. 2. A flickering bird darts into the eaves. 3. A breath of wind. Cherry petals spinning across the drive.

1. Spring flowers are fallen stars. 2. crick-crack crick crick-crack. Pine cones are opening in the hot bright air. 3. A crow watches the collared doves. A mean boss on a warm Friday afternoon.

1. To wake early in an unfamiliar room and see that the eastern sky is pink. 2. Our blackbird splashing in the puddle by the bins. 3. The cherry blossom is out in our street. Nick says: 'It was just like this when I bought the flat.'

1. Granny Pat remembers my husband. "She said: 'That's Nick Law'," my aunt tells us. 2. Stand still. Willow tit (drab little fellow in a black velvet cap) and nut hatch (black Lone Ranger mask, blue-grey jacket and a waistcoat the colour of the ragged inner bark that clings to sweet chestnut rails). 3. "That bright star on the horizon is Venus," says my uncle. "And at about four o'clock, there's a dimmer one -- that's Mercury. You don't often see them together." Later, as we walk home from the station, we look at the sky again. "Do you see stars, or just dots of light?" Nick asks.

Sandra has written a 3BT post at Living in 22 . Have a look at the rest of her blog -- she has some wonderful photos of garden birds. 1. I get a coffee and line up my week's work in my notebook. 2. I like to hear the robin chipping-chipping away -- he sits (small and bellicose) in the conifer outside the window to guard the coconut shell filled with fat and seeds. 3. We have moved the kitchen table round to give more space in the kitchen, and now instead of sitting face-to-face, we sit side-by-side. I wasn't keen because I thought it would make conversation awkward. It doesn't really; and now we tend to turn our chairs at the end of the meal to spend some time cuddling and chatting.

1. Some of our homemade loaves cut more neatly than others. This (white with cheese and chives and mustard) is one of the tidy ones -- it's pleasing to lay out flat, even slices for my sandwich. 2. Seagulls spring into the air as if the lower cricket ground has been suddenly pulled taut. 3. Nick comes home, I stop work, and the flat lets out a great sigh of relief and sinks down into a relaxing evening.

Some blogs that I have been enjoying recently: It Made My Day -- joyful moments submitted by the wide world. The Sill of the World's week in seven words -- HKatz picks seven words to sum up the week. Thxthxthx -- short thank you letters to inanimate objects. The Barefoot Chick's 3BT 1. I wake up and a warm hug comes snaking over from the other side of the bed. 2. A blue tit hangs on a vertical branch and looks sideways at the half coconut shell stuffed with fat and peanuts. 3. For pudding -- brownies with sour cherries and creme fraiche cut with orange rind.

1. At the art gallery here in Tunbridge Wells, we are lucky enough to have an exhibition of David Hockney's Brother's Grimm prints . We go together and enjoy Hockney's wonderful imagination (Rumplestilchen tears himself in half, quarters and then into tiny pieces), his skill at the medium (I enjoyed the contrast between the heap of straw and heap of gold) and his acute observation (loved the enchantress' hairy chin). 2. We view a house, and I spot a guide to British birds in the sitting room, and an improvised birdtable on the hedge. 3. I have finally got round to securing the buttons on my coat -- they've been dangling on long (but well secured) threads for weeks, and looking really untidy. We put a radio play on (a Big Finish Doctor Who) and before I know it, the job is done.

Was talking about bird footprints in the snow the other day, and look, Lucille has put some pictures on her blog, Useful or Beautiful . 1.How gratifying to see the apple I put out for the birds pecked into a mass of peaks and chasms. 2. It's such a relief to come off compacted and frozen snow, where I have been sliding and sinking by turns, and on to a gritted road. 3. Coming into a warm, bright house where there will be an evening of pizza and gaming.

I put three more blogs on the Roll of Honour yesterday: Nicsknots , For the Love of Beads (home of regular commenter Rosebud) an d Tru's Flickr photo set . Both Feather Duster and Joannezipan have been following footprints in the snow. I loved Den's picture of a prideful garden bird . In one of those odd thematic co-incidences, a small congregation of 3BTers have written about places of worship this week. Whitney (who got a wonderful treat on her birthday ) had a Yoda moment while serving communion . Raymond Pert has been feeling at home in his church, and so has Leonora . Lynn uses a lovely phrase to describe packing away the decorations in her church, and enjoys one of her mother-in-law's sayings. Finally Ruth at Sheer Sumptuosity raced through the snow for an Arabian treat, and shares a picture of the beautiful badges she is making for Valentine's day. 1. I am on the phone to my mother-in-law when I spot a bluetit on the bird feeder. I haven...