light through the day

I need to take about 12 images from dawn to dusk over one day or if necessary over a couple of days to take a look at what happens as the sun moves and how it alters the lighting in the scene I am trying to photograph.  Well that's the theory anyway but at the moment trying to get even a few hours of sunshine is nothing short of a miracle its either raining or cloudy, I have therefore decided to put this exercise to one side and continue on with the other exercises depending on the weather, therefore this blog might seem a bit dis-jointed but i hope its not too difficult to follow.
I am getting desperate now as I feel I am getting too far behind even thought I have gone on to some of the other exercises I would rather not go off on too many different paths at the moment.
Finally a sunny day (or at least it started off that way) and below are my first four photographs, one thing I should mention is that these photographs were taken in my garden which maybe wasn't the best place but as I said I needed to get on with it my grass is artificial so the bright green is correct and my screen is calibrated.

The first thing I noticed was how the sun was striking against the fence and how soft the light way with an almost golden tinge to it, the next three were taken over the next few hours and although the sun did go in for one it came back out again for the next one and I really started to notice how much more of the fence was lite by the sun.
The next four and by now I am noticing the colour change and also the shadows and how much softer they appear in the photograph taken around 1 o'clock.

I also noticed that the detail is not as clear in the 1 o'clock photograph I would not like to use this photograph.

The next four photographs and the light is really changing with bigger or should that be longer shadows and also there are more of them for instance there are now shadows from the decking posts which have only just appeared.

These have loaded the wrong way for some reason but I hope that by looking at the photographs you will be able to see the correct order.
The final photographs

by now the sun has more or less gone from here now but the main thing I noticed that for most of the day the settings didn't change much on the camera with it metering at around 1/320's or 1/400's and F9 or F10.

so what did I learn from this exercise? I learnt to watch how the light changes the look of something and how sometimes it is worth getting up early to get a lovely soft golden light rather than the brightness that appears later on in the day, although in a way this set of photographs was not all successful in terms of getting the sun it has really made me look and appreciate lighting so much more and I now find myself watching the light changing on my journey to work, My favorite time of the day was the early morning shots not only because of the quality of the light but also how peaceful it was.