#255 - Green Elderberries

The elderberries are purpling as the season turns, but the green, unripe berries are striking against the red stems.

#254 - Purple Cranesbill

This is from my Summer stash, but we have been away and I saw that meadow geraniums, which are a similar colour, are still out in the fields down country.  This blue I couldn't resist and the distinctive geranium veins are feathering the tissue-thin petals oh so perfectly

#253 - Three Leaf Clovers with Raindrops

Leaving the park today our eyes were drawn to a patch of clover leaves in the grass bejewelled with droplets of silver.

#252 - Wild Morning Glory and Herb Robert

Oh we love bindweed although we know we shouldn't - it's brave, bugle-shaped flowers appear all over the city, it's green tendrils twining lovingly in hedges and fences. My daughter can only remember that it's called Morning Glory, my favourite name for it, and the most fitting because it sounds like trumpets... and hope.

#251 - Ragwort

I know this is a common weed but it is so bold and beautiful. Rain or shine and pretty much all year round, it is lightening some corner of the city.

#250 - Pink Clover and Dried Grass

These are the colours of my Summer - the soft,dusky pink of clover flowers and the faded straw colour of tall grasses dried by the sun. It has not been the bright beautiful Summer I would have liked, feeling somewhat grey myself I have struggled to look for the beauty around me, but these calm colours, which clothe the hills near where we walk almost every day, have been unfailingly comforting. 

#249 - Kiss-me-on-the-mountain

A happy name for these bright, butterfly-like flowers which were all over the park we were at today.

#248 - New Maple Leaves Turning Green.

Under the big Maple tree in the park, new shoots grow up from the base of the trunk and the leaves open, crumpled and scarlet, as they will become again later in the year. The smallest leaves are still bright crimson, perfectly shaped in miniature and glossy with newness, but green spreads tentatively as the leaves age. The children and I were so surprised  when we saw this, another thing I'd never noticed before.

#247 - Field Mint

The flowers seem to come in waves of colour - the first blooms of the year were all white, and then as Spring came in properly, shades of pink in every tree and hedgerow, then a sunny golden yellow in the meadows. Now, at the end of Summer I keep seeing purple - the tiny Herb Roberts, delicate Wild geranium, feathery Knapweed, the bold Rosebay Willowherb and this aromatic Field Mint in a pale lavender which is thronging the banks of our stream. 

#246 - Wood Geranium

I should be sensibly using up my backlog of summer photos, but I rather lost my heart to these sweet wild geraniums in shades of mauve we saw this afternoon.  We went further down a path we usually turn off and found a whole bank of them, and as I laid them on the moss to photograph them the wind shifted the clouds and the sun streamed through the trees right on to their exquisitely veined, fragile faces.

#245 - Razor Shells

I took this picture a few weeks ago on a rare beach visit. They're not the prettiest shells, I can never visit a beach without bringing home some shells or beautiful sea-worn stones and I have never brought home razor shells before, but at this beach there were so many of them at the tide-line. I found myself arranging them idly as the children dug moats and built castles... lining them up, sharp edges and smooth backs, greys and soft fawns and opalescent whites, quiet lines in the sand...a soothing rhythm of simple shapes and tones.

#244 - Knapweed

I have fallen off the wagon somewhat with my blogging, for various reasons, but I have taken a few photos over the summer - these delightful feathery knapweed flowers, which I had been thinking were a sort of thistle, are all over one of our favourite meadows, looking exotic and somewhat gorgeous with their arrogant purple plumes.