#295 - Autumnal Maple Leaves

One of our favourite trees in the park, not quite as ostentatious as some maples but still suitably gaudy in its autumn apparel.

#294 - Autumn rainbow

It's that time of year again... wellies and mud and driving rain and cold fingers and rainbows under the trees...

#293 - Ivy Flowers

Until I began this blog, last autumn, I had never noticed that Common Ivy has a rather amazing flower. They look like something that should grow on the seabed and are a very hopeful green that seems at odds with the usually sombre ivy.

#292 - Flowering Cherry Autumn Leaves

Let the Autumn bouquets begin! How happy these make me feel.

#291 - Robin's Pincushion Gall

There are only a handful a photos in this blog I regret and my Robin's Pincushion. this time last year, is one of those. I'd just had my eye surgery and so couldn't tell that the picture was out of focus which was disappointing as I really wanted to do them justice. I just thought they were such mysterious looking things with such a charming name, besides which, it is a wonderful moment when your child tells you something that you didn't know, I mean a real fact, not the "Guess what I've just done..." sort of enlightenment. I expect I shall get used to it but it is still, a year later, very much a novelty and the Robin's Pincushion always reminds me of that now, the slightly humbling wonder of having my own child impart knowledge to me.

#290 - Narrow Leafed Ash Leaves

I didn't have time to make this picture as symmetrical as I would have liked before the wind scattered the leaves, creating different, but equally beautiful designs. As I watched the leaves rearranged again and again so quickly, like a kaleidoscope being turned, I wondered if perhaps that is why I find so much satisfaction in this pattern making I attempt. My life is busy - people, places and events combine, disperse and regroup, at dizzying speeds, often with minimal input from myself. It is a sort of therapy to make, for sometimes just a few seconds, my own pattern. To turn the kaleidoscope myself.  

#289 - Dock Stalks against Sky

Yesterdays spectacular evening sky behind the humble dock which dries to such sculptural perfection. Some moments just feel like a gift.

#288 - Soft Rush at Sunset

The nights are drawing in. Evenings walks are all about rain-washed skies and stark silhouettes against the shifting clouds, backlit by the sinking sun.

#287 - Sweet Chestnut Cases

Sweet Chestnut cases are the most beautiful green. Walking through the woods in the rain, most of the colours were darkened and drab and then I stooped round a low branch and came under a Sweet Chestnut tree and there was this green... The colour seemed to float above the black forest floor.

#286 - Conkers

We love the seeds of the horse chestnut so much, the children and I can't pass a tree without collecting a pocketful. We have no purpose for them, they just look so gorgeous and tactile, little gleaming nuggets in among the leaves, it's impossible to pass them by.

#285 - Cleavers

The weeds are dying back and drying into filigree that drapes the undergrowth like this trailing lacework of  Cleavers.

#284 - Red Leaves in the Sun

Walking through the trees this afternoon, we saw a little red tree on the boundary where the shadows of the oaks finished and the sunlight began. It looked like some sort of cherry plum, standing in the sun holding up its small, rosy leaves joyously, and the light streamed over it, making it luminous and alive.

#283 - Whitebeam Leaves

The wind had turned these fallen whitebeam leaves so that they were showing their pale undersides and lay on the grass under the tree looking, from a distance, like white feathers.

#282 - Poppies in October

...a gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky...

(Sylvia Plath)