#300 - Golden

So it's my 300th photo blog post (I know!) and this week was my father's funeral, so I have been waiting for the perfect picture. And then, today, I saw it, just as we came down the hill there was a break in the clouds and a maple tree lit up, lantern-like, in the hedge

It was such a beautiful afternoon the day we said goodbye. The days before and since have been mostly grey, but that day the whole world was glowing and golden. Somehow, despite the pile of earth and the gash in the ground, it was impossible not to look up at the trees, burnished so brightly they flamed with promise on the clear, blue sky. Those slow moments, heavy with finality, I will always remember instead as illuminated.

#299 - Bright Leaf-drops on Charred Wood

Had a busy day yesterday so ended up walking the dog on a piece of wasteland behind shops. Saw a shrub inside some ugly railings in a carpark with these beautifully shaped leaves, like teardrops, and in bright crimsons, golds and greens. 

#298 - Red and Green Dogwood leaves on Slate

Dogwoods look so neat, they lack the scrubby, unkempt look of our native plants at this time of year and look rather smug next to their hedge neighbours. But the colours are nice now that the Maples are almost bare.

#297 - Fallen Maple Leaves

And underfoot, a carpet of maple leaves, their colours bright against the rain-darkened grass.

#296 - Sunlight on Leaves

Now, most of the leaves are past their best and are spotted with age, ready to fall. But there are some still lighting up with the low, end-of-year sun. Like stained glass, translucent and radiant, they are transformed momentarily at a certain time in the afternoon.

#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)

#281 - Sunlight in Grass

The sun sometimes lights a patch of greenery just so, it makes you catch your breath. How the lowly weeds transform before your eyes and are fleetingly radiant. It is both wondrous and strangely humbling.

#280 - Heavenly trumpets

Thinking about heaven today... we are expecting a death in the family in the near future, which is sad and a little unreal. Shed a few tears today out in the park on the quiet hills and then saw these valiant, end-of-season flowers at the top of the hedge, almost out of reach.

#279 - Horse Chestnut Seed Cases

We saw these rather spectacular conker cases which had fallen on to the path today. They have turned a rich, dark chestnut colour which draws attention to their dramatic sculptural shape.

#278 - Wild Chervil at Twilight

Dusk was falling as I walked up the hill this evening. Some of the grass in the meadow had been cut, it was stubbly underfoot and the Wild Chervil has gone to seed - its tall stalks stood out blackly against the darkening horizon, spindly stars holding their pale, moon-like seeds up into the approaching night. I felt that I had taken this picture before because the stars of Wild chervil are a repeating motif on our city walks, one that is endlessly satisfying.  I stopped to take another long, marvelling look and think about how I really shouldn't take yet another picture of Wild Chervil ... 

#277 - Milk Thistle Heads

These dried thistle heads were absolutely gorgeous in the sunshine, all glowing and pearlescent in the afternoon. 

#276 - Hornbeam bracts

The hornbeams at the park have long, decorative tassels of bracts which are turning yellow and fawn as the weather  changes. Tonight, the path was scattered with these sconce-leaves, each protectively cupping a green seed-flame.

#275 - Tattered Maple Leaves

The Purple-Leaved Maple is shedding its leaves. They lie, glossy and near-black, at the foot of the tree. What beautiful rags they make.

#274 - Dream Catchers

The sun is lower in the sky this season and shines across the top of the tall weeds, irradiating the thistledown and seed plumes of the Rosebay Willowherb. The silvery, silken strands are held delicately between the curved, outflung arms of these open seed cases.

#273 - Redshank

These flowers seems to have sprung up, almost overnight, on the banks of the stream. Perhaps the last of the summer wine... 

#272 - Groundsel heads on Bark

"Dandelions shouldn't grow in the woods, though. They haven't any sense of the fitness of things at all. They are too cheerful and self-satisfied. They haven't any of the mystery and reserve of the real wood-flowers."
"But wait a bit, the wood will have its own way even with those obvious dandelions. In a little while all that obtrusive yellowness and complacency will be gone and we'll find here misty, phantom-like globes hovering over those long grasses in full harmony with the traditions of the forest."
(L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle)

I love this passage about dandelions, it often comes to mind when I see them, or dandelion-like flowers like groundsel, because they are, well, rather garish. And by contrast, the seedheads are so mysterious and beautiful. The tiny groundsel heads in this picture look ethereal, almost dream-like, against the craggy bark of the tree trunk.

#271 - Ripening Leyland Cypress cones

The children adore the tiny, round cones on the Leylandii, they pluck them by the handful and incorporate them into their games. I just like them because they look like roses and because when they first appear they are blue. Now they are hardening and they open slightly as they turn brown to release the seeds inside. And they still look like roses.

#270 - Curled Hornbeam leaves

Because of the mild weather it has not yet started to feel like autumn, although the leaves are changing colour.  I noticed these fallen hornbeam leaves rolling along the ground when a gust of wind caught them and saw that they had curled up tightly into neat little cornets.

#269 - Great Willowherb

I kept thinking this was early Rosebay Willowherb that had not fully opened, but then the real Rosebay started blooming and I realised it couldn't be. It looks like a domesticated cousin,  the same sing-across-the-park-purple but with a white, lolling stigma that lacks the splaying vitality of Rosebay and looks instead rather indolent. The colour though, that is the thing, and meant to be seen with green.

#268 - Dead Nettle Calyces

At this time of year the leaves are dying back and intriguing shapes begin to emerge from the undergrowth. This tall nettle stem was circled by rings of bell-shaped calyx. 

#267 - Field Mustard on Stone

Last winter, however miserable it was, there was always one cheerfully yellow Field Mustard plant that I would look out for. This year it has multiplied and is growing along the length of the path, and as I have grown somewhat attached to it, on account of its persistence, I am pleased to see the proliferation of this uncomplicated, sweetly unpretentious weed. 

#266 - Dip-dyed Pine Needles

I love the way green drains slowly from these pine needles, not fading out but leaving through the tips, as if it has bled out onto the earth, leaving room for the warm, surging colours of the new season.

#265 - Yarrow Flowers

Yarrow flowers are so neat and compact with their bunchy green backs and I like the muted colour pallet of this array on a greying tree stump.

#264 - Sunset through Thistledown

As I came over the brow of the hill, yesterday evening, the sun was slowly sinking behind the trees in the distance and, just for a few minutes, the light caught on the silver thistle tops in the field so that they were illuminated and flamed like lanterns into the gathering dusk.

#263 - Linden Tree bracts

Lindens are so understated, they are a quiet presence, even in Autumn. I like the gentle colours of these slender bracts, so slowly warming from the palest yellow to tawny bronze, against the soft green of the trunk.

#262 - Blackening Waxcap

I found these mushrooms in the grass, black and frilly edged, and the gills, when I turned them over (because I love the underneaths of mushrooms with their miniature cathedral-like fan vaulting) were a dull gold.

#261 - Rosebay Willowherb Flowers

It's time for the Rosebay Willowherb again, one of my very first posts was about these beautiful, two-tone-purple flowers which are everywhere at this time of year. I'd never really looked at one a year ago, now they seem like old friends. 

#260 - Field Thistle heads

The purple Field Thistle heads are beginning to turn silver ...

#259 - Irresistible Rose hips

Because it's that time of year, the time for making rose-hip jelly, which is a bit fiddly but the children adore picking the delicious looking, glossy, scarlet hips. 

#258 - Convolvulus on Bramble Leaf

It's been more than a year now, since I started this blog-journey. A form of conscious thankfulness for my everyday surroundings. My most common emotion has been astonishment - amazement that I could have lived so long and noticed so little. Just over a year later and the year has turned full circle, and once again I am astonished. How could I have forgotten that the blackberry leaves can turn such a gorgeous full-bodied crimson, against which the brilliant green of the convolvulus leaves strikes a perfect dissonance?

#257 - Purple Loosestrife

I keep seeing these purple flowers that grow in spires by the water - they look like they just got out of bed with their crumpled, untidy bunches of petals, and their innocent morning colours.

#256 - Blackberries Ripening

We can't walk anywhere at the moment without the children stopping to pick blackberries and, when we think we've exhausted one patch, we find another just ripening, the berries scarlet and black, pinpricks of light gleaming in the wild sprays of bramble which trail overhead and underfoot.

#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.