#144 - Conkers in Mud

Mostly, everything is just muddy. The ground is soft underfoot and water lies in every hollow. Under the trees, the soil is a rich black with black twigs, leaves and seed-case fragments. Beautiful mud. Yesterday, walking under the horse-chestnuts I kicked through leaves lying dark and curled on the ground and there were conkers - little gleaming secrets under the leaves.

#143 - Alder

Okay, I admit I may be getting obsessive about the purple Alder catkins, but they are purple. Purple. And the violet catkins uncurl so sweetly into the cold sleet, they gladden this heart.

#142 - Chandelier

A rainy walk today, and I saw this broken weed hanging upside down in a hedge, globes of water glistening like candles on each of its branches. Because they dropped when I moved them I had to collect some more, carefully holding each twig-tip to another silver flame until it caught light.

#141 - Twig Flower

This tree looked so twiggy and crookedy against the grey sky today, I wanted to take a silhouette picture - but when I looked more closely I saw that the twigs were colourful with lichen, and the ends were nubbly with a hint of pink where the leaf buds are about to come through. It just all looked rather wonderful up close. So I made a flower shape instead.

#140 - Wood Sorrel on Stone

Had a long walk in the woods with our new dog this morning. Saw these sweet, trefoil leaves, all green and tremulous under the trees. I love the colour of the green hearts on the blue rock. My own heart, feeling similarly tear-heavy, rests on the rock beneath.

#139 - Rain-soaked Whitebeam Leaves

This week we were stunned when a close friend was rushed into hospital, she is now extremely ill. I am beyond words...sometimes it's very hard to find the beauty in life... on our way to the park we kick through piles of these leaves which are rain-blackened and glossy and strangely lovely.

#138 - Flowers on Still Water

"We are alive within mystery, by miracle." Wendell Berry

#137 - Linden shoots

Colour is creeping gradually back into the world. Standing underneath the empty Linden trees today,  I noticed that from the gnarled trunk, new smooth shoots are branching out - they are pink where they face the sun and amber underneath.

#136 - Ice against the Sky

What fun we had at the park today! The puddles were frozen over and we broke slabs of ice from the water and lifted them up to the sky, admiring their frosted patterns and lacy edges...

#135 - Wild Chamomile flower heads

I love these little, round, yellow flowers; they look so tactile - like tiny, fat cushions. Every day I walk into the park, past the leafless trees at the entrance, and I smile down at the Wild Turnip glowing so cheerfully by the path and then nod to the Wild Chamomile, valiantly bright despite the cold and the rain. I guess they are weeds (what else would be so tough?) but I prefer to think of them as wild flowers. I like their attitude.

#134 - Purple Alder Catkins

Isn't a world where purple catkins grow on green twigs slightly more wonderful than one where they don't?

#133 - Fallen Evergreen

A late dog walk today, to catch the last of the afternoon light. The paths in the park are littered with twigs that have been blown from the trees in the recent high winds. Some of the evergreen foliage was strewn about too, looking carelessly gorgeous on the wet ground.

#132 - Red Dogwood and Willow

It's more about the textures at this time of year, but there are some colours in the drabness. The long, hanging branches of the Weeping Willows are bright yellow and you can see the scarlet stalks of dogwood from across the park.

#131 - Catkins

I read a beautifully descriptive phrase today: "the...sheen that the world wears to the eyes of children..." (Elizabeth Goudge - The Valley of Song). 

I feel that I have recaptured some of that sheen for my own eyes in setting myself this year-long task. Walking round the very muddy park today I glanced up and the yellow catkins on the bare Hazels made me gasp. They are like a little promise of Spring. Just a hint, a trembling, yellow whisper of things to come. 

#130 - Pine Needles

The pavement is soft with fallen pine needles.  Next to the tangled brambles and intertwining hedgerows, there is something fascinating about the smooth, simple curves of the needles, all the intersecting lines, like hieroglyphs or  the brush strokes of some beautifully written language. 

#129 - Winter Sun on Grass

Someone I know wrote a song that talks about the brightness of the winter sun, I always thought it incongruous. This winter though, I am seeing that the light has a certain quality that is specific to this time of year. A cold brilliance. Walking home through the park today as our shadows stretched long on the grass, the children playing with the swooping giants they cast on the hillside, I saw how in this bleakness, when all the world is bare and thin, the sun makes something new of it all. A line of grasses, dried up and colourless, beyond the sparse bushes at the top of the bank, were suddenly radiant. 

#128 - Moss Star

Oh, the moss is everywhere, after the rain. It doesn't even look old, like some moss does, suggestive of age and decay. This moss is bright and young and alive, springing up from the beech mast under the trees, frothing over the piles of logs and cascading down over stumps and brambles. It is like green foam, airy and tumbling. I like the sharpness of it's colour against the wet, red wood, and the wispy arms that remind me of starfish.

#127 - Torn Wood

Up in the woods today, after the recent high winds, we saw several trees which had been damaged and had had to be cut down. Everything was soaking wet, making the newly sawn off stumps vivid pinks and oranges, and where the wood had torn, the light caught the splintered edges making them translucent, so that they glowed like amber against the sky. 

#126 - Conifer Leaf Tips

"There isn't any such thing as ordinary life."
(L M Montgomery)

I have the usual January malaise. I am cheering myself up by re-reading lots of old friends from my childhood and I read this yesterday in "Emily Climbs". It is, I suppose, what this blog set out to say, how there is not much that is ordinary, so much that is especial. Like these little brown nibbed conifer leaves I saw lying on the path today - I have always thought evergreens to be rather dreary trees and yet I keep noticing new things about them. And how pleasant it is to be wrong.

#125 - dried conifer on green wood

A cold, wet day today. Sometimes, something surprising catches your eye, in the hedge or tucked behind a fence. Like this dead conifer, dried into such rich shades of chestnut and umber, it may have been intense anyway but it stood out as it trailed over the green algae on the wooden rail, one of those colour combinations that make you glad to be alive and outside despite the wind and the rain.

#124 - Privet, Green and Gold

Without other colours to distract the eye, the whole world is green and blue. Blue is heavenly, ethereal, but green is alive. Walking through all the green today, this privet out on the park boundary caught my eye because of the bright leaves in among the green. They looked like tiny golden pears.

#123 - Fallen Oak Leaves

There are things growing, new shoots, tiny buds swelling on twig-tips, lots of green things...but the ground is still covered in last years leaves. We kick through them as we walk and they rearrange themselves and fall in new patterns. I love the way the edges of the oak leaves lie together, all undulating edges and shades of russet. In the afternoon the sun sinks low enough to catch their edges so that they gleam copper and bronze under the trees.