I forgot how much I liked walking in the rain. How quiet it is, how the sound of the rain encloses you. Peaceful.
The brook was swollen in the park, and rivulets ran down the footpath. Water collected in every dip and hollow, so that everywhere was full of shifting, silvery streams. These lichen encrusted twigs lay half submerged, the palest green which almost shimmered in the pearly light.
I had decided to stop taking pictures, to stop being the women who crouches down over puddles in the rain; who puts her fingers into the mud to rearrange twigs just because they are looking strangely beautiful... but look how exquisite they are!
9th April, 2018
One day, I won't be thrilled by Spring. But not today.
I thought it would be fitting to finish with a circle. I have photographed so many circles during the course of this blog - flowers, leaves, berries - and it has been a record of the cycle of the seasons. Such a beautiful journey into mindfulness. I will never walk through the world as mindlessly as I did before I started to deliberately notice things, the way my children did when they saw 'twinkly weeds' and 'sparkly flowers'. Slowing down to notice has been a gift I gave to myself as I walked the city streets and parks, the ugly places and cramped corners of Birmingham which expanded and unfurled before my eyes, revealing mystery and beauty.
I found these tiny Firethorn leaves in a hedge at the edge of the field where my children were sledging. The field only barely escapes being wasteland, a steep hill between two council estates that is usually bordered with wide swathes of bramble. With the thorns smothered under piles of snow, I could walk right to the edges where the gardens begin, and this Firethorn had spilled over into the wilderness, a small flare of colour I could see from far up on the hill. I walked down through the drifts and made a perfect circle of green and red on the snow, and in the distance I could hear my children laughing and shrieking as they slid down the hill over and over again. Our own little circle of perfection. The snow was crisp underfoot and the sun was streaming over the houses and tower-blocks behind us as I crouched over my little circlet of leaves, their colours so perfect and glowing between the snow and the sun... and I thought to myself... what a wonderful world!
The colours are subtle at this time of year and the snow is so bright everything looks somewhat blanched next to it's pristine glory. Blackberry leaves are a continual presence in the city and one of the few plants that still have new growth, even under the snow. I have photographed them in every stage: fresh, new green; robust summer verdure and the showy scarlets and wine-reds of autumn. In the snow they, like everything else, look bleached, but their undersides are all texture - lines and shadows of lines, with the bright pulse of spring hiding in pale veins, and tiny, crimson tipped thorns just showing on their stems.
I love the way the snow looks like clouds. The illusion of a juxtaposition of ethereal, airy space against the cruel sharpness of the leaves.
The days are so short at this time of year; the shadows move over the snow minute by minute. Light lies in hollows and catches the edge of crystals, throwing the dried grasses into stark silhouette.
I have been holding out for snow. I know the blog ended up lasting much longer than a year, but we haven't had enough snow to take a decent picture in, well, three, four years. It just didn't seem right to round up the 365 without some snow pictures. But finally, finally, it snowed in England - and we were all so excited that we rushed straight out with our sledges and I got involved in some intense igloo-building and then the snow had gone and I hadn't even taken any pictures. And then, Boxing day night, just as the children went up to bed, the cry went up from the landing, "It's snowing!" I can't hear those words without a small excited tingle - it takes me straight back to winters long ago with my brother practically willing the snow to fall. My dad would tease him that the snow wouldn't stay on the ground and he'd be quivering with delight and eagerness to get out for snowball fights. Happy memories.
I made some more memories, with my own children, yesterday. The sun was piercing and the snow had frozen hard so that when I laid these beautiful twigs covered in Sunburst Lichen on to it, they appeared to float weightlessly.
And so it begins... another autumn. I will miss the long evenings and bright days of summer but love this last flaming of nature before the weather really changes. My first perfect moment of the new season was seeing these leaves lying on the forest floor. As the song goes: "How can I keep from singing...?"
