Silent night

So we didn't have a white one but we have had a spectacularly bright and sunny one; a run of completely cloudless days and deep cerulean blue skies since Christmas settling into breathtaking sunsets.
I've been reading Mikhail Bulgakov's White Guard and was struck by his descriptions of Kiev as evening descends and life and noise in the city becomes muffled and indistinct as a grey darkness falls.
Not surprisingly rural Devon is quite different, there is a sharp and focused clarity to dusk ably assisted no doubt by clear air and little noise or light pollution beyond what radiates from chez dovegrey.
Completely silent but for the last echoes of roosting pheasants and a little family of murmuring wrens who have taken over the vacant swallow's nest on the verandah. If disturbed too much the wrens panic and fly indoors, so this week we have had the dilemma of wrens perched in the Christmas tree and cats settling expectantly beneath, and we have now blessed and offered a sainthood to the person who suggested that the whole thing be tethered to a hook in the ceiling beams.
There is a brilliant single planet visible in the south-west night sky as dusk falls at the moment which we think is Venus, astronomers feel free to correct us, but all too beautiful for words, so here's the picture as we stand outside the front door, looking from us in Devon across to they in Cornwall and that planet.