As the year changes, so do we. The seasons shape what and how we do, how we live. It sounds as an old song, ancient one, but here it’s still relevant, still the same cycle – the golden wheel defines and conditions when and why we touch the soil, to strengthen it or to leave it rest quietly, when and why we’re exhilarated by the energy, or eased off during the dark and cold.

There’s a country lane I often drive, a couple of times a day, in fact, some days even more so, and in our first year here, I particularly liked to observe the changes of the seasons on these two trees standing in one of the fields. As if they helped me root my own conscience to this place, to get used to it, to naturalize to where we moved. Inevitable as they were, the changes to their shape down to the very bone of them were so impressive, especially after putting my photos captured this whole year side by side.

I kept looking at them with a bit of Vivaldi in my head, and a bit of Keats on my lips:

“Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man..”

~ The Human Seasons; John Keats ~

And with the end of our first year here approaching fast, I stay impressed with how much we, just like those trees, have been able to adapt, get along and get used to all the new ways, definitions and conditions. Here we are, in this beautiful patch of land, in this exquisite show of the might of nature, but also, the will of man.