beech flying tomatoes

 Beech hedge with pigeon.
Birds, we rather take for granted, but anything man-made that flies is always fascinating for me at least. If it's a paper dart or jumbo jet, a kite or a toy glider, I always stop to watch with a sort of longing that I sometimes reserve for being younger than I am at the moment. In Calverley Ground a small boy standing on a slope is throwing a toy glider into the air with little success. His father seems to do no better. There is little or no wind. Then as I watch the glider, thrown by the boy, seems to find a thermal or something like it and soars upwards before dropping its nose just enough to make a three point landing on  a flat piece of  ice covered ground, its equilibrium retained as its slides forward before stopping.  The boy whoops with pleasure and so do I but under my breath.
Muffled in a scarf and woolly hat Geoff greets me in The Grove. I walk across the frozen snow to meet him. I ask after his health. He responds briefly. |And adds " my tomatoes are so high." He gestures with finger and thumb which part by about three centimetres. It is such details of daily life which I enjoy when talking  to Geoff. Even though my tomato seeds have not yet arrived. "I used seeds saved from last year," he says. But there is no reprimand or even triumph in his voice.