Coombe Wood with a friend

This morning I had a thoroughly enjoyable walk with a friend from the past. We had crossed paths briefly a couple of times in the last few years but recently reconnected through Facebook and decided to meet at Coombe Wood for a walk and a good catch up.

Having seen the weather forecast the day before I had expected heavy rain but it had kindly rained earlier. I arrived early and had a short walk - everything was dripping wet

I wanted to have a look at the plant a friend from my art group had told me about. She has one in her garden and she had told me that the seed heads should be doing something interesting now. All the seed heads on this one seem to have fallen off. I couldn't see anything but leaves but looking at the top left corner of the photo below when I got home I think I may have found what I was supposed to be looking for. I will have to go back again and see if I can locate that red blob for a closer look

I went back for another look at these wonderful pods - what a stunning colour combination and neat structure they have

The small plant that looks like frilly salad leaves 

I met my friend and we walked and chatted together. It's so nice when you get together with someone you haven't spoken to for ages but it doesn't matter - you feel perfectly comfortable with them

The robin was sitting in almost exactly the same place in the little tree with the big leaves as it was a few days ago - singing its little heart out

Raindrops sparkled on grass seeds

Buds which were beginning to open had become receptacles for little pools of water

The seeds that my daughter and sister think look like dead woodlice were hanging low with the weight of the raindrops. I think they look like delicate hearts dangling from their arching stems

I narrowly avoided stepping on what I first thought were fallen leaves - we had a closer look and discovered three extremely delicate pastel yellow mushrooms growing in the grass

 The banana flower

There are now two rows of little blobs at regular intervals, under the petals. Each blob has five or six curly, stripy ribbons surrounding it. I'm surprised the light can shine through the peaches and cream coloured petals - they're so thick

The extremely sticky resin on the Korean Pine cone is almost opaque now. I do like the regular pattern of these cones. There are very few cones this year unlike last year

The beauty berries (Callicarpa) are incredible this year - the shrub is absolutely covered in them

The sun came out and lit up a patch of leaves on my favourite acer

My friend noticed the sunlight streaming through these little heart shaped leaves a little further along the path

The colours were gorgeous and the raindrops sparkling on the leaves added natural diamonds. We could imagine these and other things we had seen being inspiration for jewellery

The puff ball mushrooms that I had noticed the other day have all grown so much that some are very cramped

The patterns on them are fascinating and some are much more spiky than others

A few have already burst and spread their spores far and wide

Lovely to see some blue sky through the trees

Thank you very much for joining me