#122 - Phoenix Coloured Leaf Buds

And just like that, the year is over. We all walked to the park, my husband and I and the three children, and we climbed up the hills which look like they were meant to be a bike track but are covered in grass and beautiful with white yarrow and purple clover and yellow buttercups in the autumn and we scattered the ashes we had collected from the vets and said goodbye. Then we walked back and past a tree with tiny copper-coloured buds, like flames, or like phoenix feathers. Even before the old year has quite finished, the new one begins. 

#121 - Seed Heads on Stone

Beautiful shapes, Rosebay Willowherb seed heads curve so wonderfully. This was a hurried picture, but I like the lines and the non-colours. All the year bleached white and gone. I picked up the ashes from the vets today and tomorrow the children and I will take them to our special park and scatter them on the hills.

#120 - Laurestine

The winter sunshine keeps enticing me out. Of course this shrub isn't native to the UK but it is nonetheless cheering on a cold day when not much else is out.

#119 - Leaf Skeleton

Something beautiful about Winter - you get down to the bare bones. All this exquisite filigree inside a leaf and you only get to see it when the wind and the rain have worn away the green flesh. Just the bare bones. And it should look grotesque but instead it is like a hidden treasure being slowly revealed.

#118 - Purple Deadnettle

Saw these lovely purple nettles in the field outside my sister's house, they remind me of crouching down in the back garden as a child and seeing the weeds growing by the wall, nettles with purple and white flowers, we used to suck the white flowers because they were sweet like honey. 

#117 - Boxing Day Colours

Today looked so beautiful and sunshiny. Forced myself out of my chocolate-filled cocoon and took the children out to a nearby park. It is rather a dull park. I walked a little by myself while they played and saw some colour over by the fence. I found this very prickly shrub that had some bright leaves tucked in its spiny, evergreen heart - orange, crimson and a deep burgundy. I picked a few and walked back over to the swings, holding my bounty carefully. There is something so amazing about colour, it speaks like music I think, in a way you can't explain.

#116 - Christmas Day

God bless us, everyone!

#115 - Seed heads

Made it outside today, in between hailstorms. I've lost my Heroic Dogwalker image, now I'm just a sad lady walking in the rain. Love these neat little seed-heads though, the way they glimmer white even in the rain.

#114 - Bracket Fungi

I have a little confession to make, the last couple of days have been photos taken in the last few weeks, before the dog died. Somehow the joy has gone out of walking, I miss seeing the dog's plumey white tail ahead of me and I certainly can't face visiting our local park where she was run over. So this is another photo taken not too long ago, but not this week. Maybe tomorrow I'll get out there again...

#113 - Rain on Pine Needles

There is just something about being out in the woods in the rain, it makes me think of the Paul Simon song, 'The sound of silence.' 

#112 - Three Hearts

Three little Shepherds Purse seed pods.

#111 - Red Leaves

Was shuffling though the leaves as the children played at the park today, feeling cold and miserable but couldn't help noticing these rather spectacular red leaves that were tumbled in the mud with the black and brown ones.

#110 - December Blossom

We didn't quite make it to the park yesterday, at the gate I let the dog off the lead but instead of bounding joyfully into the park as usual, she turned and ran straight under a lorry. Her injuries were so extensive that later that day she had to be put to sleep. I noticed this little blossom tree last week but it seemed far too early to be posting Spring pictures, today though, I went back and found it. My heart is heavy with sadness, my head  full of the ugly images of yesterday morning - suffering and death are such a horrible part of life, and yet, ultimately I believe life has the last word. I choose to remember her like this.

#109 - Old Willow

These old willow leaves were lying on the grass today, black and silver. Even all rain-sodden they still look elegant - mono-chromic and graceful on the mud.

#108 - Winter Leaf Flower

I don't know what this shrub is, I've seen it a few times and came across it again in the woods. One of the few patches of colour now most of the other trees have lost their foliage. It has small, bright leaves, almost like petals, in shades of red and orange. 

#107 - Reindeer Lichen

All Christmassy again, but only by accident this time. I found this bunch of feathery lichen under the oak trees in our park, it must have fallen from the high branches where it would have been quite difficult for the local reindeer to reach, except the flying ones of course!

#106 - Leyland Cypress

I love the blue-black tips on this cypress foliage. And the way the colour graduates from pale green to a richer, darker tone. It all looks so perfect.

#105 - Birch Catkin Bracts

I was admiring the catkins on a silver birch and thinking how they looked like little strings of beads. I tried to pick one and it fell apart in my hand, and, lo and behold, lots of tiny seeds and fleur de lis shaped bracts, just like beads on a necklace. 

#104 - Ivy Flowers

Ivy is everywhere, right? But I never noticed it had flowers, which is shameful, and they look so exotic as well, these have lost all their little extra petals and still look wonderful. Happened to read the other day that in the language of flowers ivy means fidelity and friendship. Had  I learnt that last year I would have thought it a shame that such a dull plant should symbolise something so profound. Now I think it rather fitting. And I keep seeing it everywhere, telegraph poles, fences, corners of car parks, walls - even in the city, ivy is everywhere. Common Ivy, which still manages to be a little out of the ordinary.

#103 - Starry, starry night...

Aren't these the most beautiful dead weeds you ever saw? They are like van Gogh stars, trailing glory across the heavens, or dancing comets, or even delicate sea-creatures that live far away from sunlight, weightless in the water and the darkness...

#102 - Mistletoe

We were staying in Herefordshire last night and took the dog round the fields this morning. The sun was bright on the row of bare poplars opposite the house and as I turned into a new field I saw this mistletoe, high up in the tree. As I stepped towards the trunk to try and reach up and get some, a pheasant flew up from practically under my feet, and flapped heavily off over the farmland. I've never seen mistletoe in the wild before so I am disproportionately delighted with my find.

White-fruited Rowen

I saw this tree from across the park and thought it was covered in blossom, on closer inspection it was thick with clusters of these white berries. each tipped with a tiny, five-pointed star. I love the pink blush on some of them too.

#100 - Blackberry flower

An audacious blackberry flower - in December! I have concluded that the bramble is absolutely without any sense of propriety. I rather like it's bold, bad style and am happy to celebrate 100 days of looking at the beautiful with this humble, hedgerow pest which seems to embody all that has been surprising about this hundred day journey. 

#99 - Parasol Mushrooms

After much umming and ahhing, I think these might be Mycena arcangeliana, but either way, they looked gorgeous in the woods this morning, growing on a tree stump. My daughter said they look like dresses from Strictly Come Dancing. 

#98 - Rainbow Feather

Sometimes you have to look hard to find something beautiful, pay attention to the landscape. Sometimes, something just appears in front of you, as if it has fallen from the sky...

#97 - Wild Turnip on Orange Lichen

Some pretty, wild turnip I noticed by the path today. I like the way the fresh yellow petals bring out the colour of the lichen on the wood.

#96 - Starry Sky

One day we turned a different way in the park and found a path that led into a wood and, after a while of following it between the trees, we came to a flight of steps, about twenty, that led down and down into the sunshine. The meadow at the bottom has the most enormous stalks of Wild Chervil that reach far overhead. It's like something out of Jules Verne. I can't wait to see it in the Spring time but at the moment the giant stems with their dried out heads are like starry coronets against the sky.