Festivities over. Phew! Diet started, Tick!
This year I took a trip around the UK to visit family and friends from Hertfordshire to Wiltshire and Sussex to Cumbria, its been quite a journey. I've stayed in a 15th century pub to a spa on a lake and no matter where I've walked and talked, nature has never failed to astound me.
In Spring and Summer we delight in the colours and variety of plants giving us that uplifting warm fuzzy feeling but Winter can be bleak. Grey, dark and forgetting that fuzzy feeling - its more like that dreaded frizzy hair weather!
Sometimes it seems to find anything gorgeous nature has to offer at this time of year is really hard work. Not so! Theres no need to look hard to see grand trees baring all of their weathered years or mosses and lichens on dead branches. Even the old, orange fronds on ferns are just a stunning sight for sore eyes along country lanes.
But bark - now you don't need to look far. Most trees are without leaves or at least with far less over the colder months. From the old, gnarly knotted bark on Oak trees to shiny, copper colours on Cherry, the almost ghostly white on Silver Birch and stunning red of Giant Redwoods. It's nature showing us what its made of.
Now is the perfect time to appreciate just how tough and sometimes, very old, our trees are. They give enormous Winter interest to gardens, parks and woodlands making a walk really interesting if you take a look around you. Plus, remember as a child it was fun to take some paper and crayons to trace the bark on trees? Well...who needs to be a child to do that? Not me!! What about you?