Sunset Boulevard

Well, not exactly... This post shows some sunset pictures taken in our road in Fleet at about 4 p.m. on one of the last days of 2011.

In the first photo the sun is just dipping below the horizon, like a splash of molten gold...

A few minutes later the sky begins to turn a subtle shade of pink...

The pink colour gets darker by the minute. There's a bright circular hole in the clouds which adds more drama to the scene... "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight" - so it should be a brilliant day tomorrow, then.

As the best colours disappear behind the house at the other side of the street, I rush indoors and dangle out of the bedroom window to get a better view. In the foreground are the nearly bare branches of my Crab Apple tree. Just a few shrivelled-up fruits remain...

An hour later, looking down the road in the opposite direction...

'Night 'Night, Fleet...

So, as the sun sets for the last time in 2011, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a Happy New Year. As a gardener, I can only hope that 2012 is a more "normal" year than 2011, and as a member of the Human Race I hope that we can all soon get our act together in terms of saving our precious environment from the rapacious depredations of "Economic Progress" !