Delicate tracery

Isn't it gorgeous?

Ain't it foggy outside...

Winter sun and fog on our unexpectedly long jog for the train to church

I love crunching through the fallen leaves in my boots

And look what I found randomly under my feet. I thought it was a daisy until I took a closer look

Autumn tints

Autumn's here - beautiful glowing season that it is. Keats described it best in his Ode to Autumn

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies."

Conkers mean it's almost autumn

My husband's just brought some conkers for me. I love the feel of conkers, they're so beautifully smooth. One's got a fiery pattern on it, ones got waves and swirls and I can't really see the pattern on the smallest. I love how God makes things so beautiful

Heron?

I'm fairly sure I spotted a heron yesterday, being chased by two crows. I thought it was a gull until I saw the legs stretched out behind it in flight. Having looked it up, I'm no longer sure, because all the pictures I can find are of fairly massive birds. The one I saw was gull size, albeit a very big gull.
I've finally found a picture that looks a bit more like it, so it could well have been a heron.

Bird feeder

We've just refilled our bird feeder (after weeks of guilt when our local robin kept coming and looking hopefully at the branch on which it used to hang) and we're now visited by a pair of coal tits. It took me a while to decide whether they were actually coal tits because blue tits look very similar. They tend to fly down, peck at the seeds while they hang on to the feeder (flapping desperately to keep their perch) and fly off quickly again.