A walk on a grey day (Coombe Wood)

Yesterday late morning - grey sky but not as cold as it has been...

The flower beds near the entrance are filling out with a lot of greenness and a few tiny splashes of colour.

Silhouettes of figs and their curly tendrils. 

All that's left of a pom pom hydrangea (- I think that must be what it is from the way the petals are decomposing). 

Among all the decaying leaves tiny green buds are showing.

I didn't realise why the shape of the liquid amber tree looked a bit different until I met the gardener and he told me that he had cut the lower branches off because they were in the way when he was mowing around it. It looks very neat. I found out that it's a memorial tree.- I've forgotten the exact details apart from the fact that he had planted it himself when he worked at the Nursery before he became the Coombe Wood gardener. I tried to find out online how long ago that was later on but reports vary - it's definitely been growing there for more than 11 or 12 years.

Contrasting textures and colours - tall slender straight stems and fluffy crinkly white seeds.

Further on - the seeds on these grasses were more golden and less crinkly.

The little hut in the background - still no repair on the front. Perhaps they will leave it like this?

Curling leaves and little green buds. 

There are still some gorgeous colours left in some of the fallen leaves.

Funny little tiny seed pods.

I took this one because of the colour of the leaves - didn't see the little red bits hanging underneath each twig till later.

Bare branches and grey sky. 

Hydrangea petals and a tiny little snail. 

This was a leafy archway not long ago but now most of the leaves on the left have gone.

Winter flowering honeysuckle - tiny white flowers. 

Iris berries

Colourful leaves

The gardener told me he had been doing "a little light pruning".

I thought these were bird's nests but the gardener suggested they might be squirrel dreys. I think he's right. (This information is not going to help my bird project for the art group I belong to. I thought I had been photographing bird's nests but now I don't know if any of them are birds nests after all.)

Looking closer - and the buds on the beech tree can be see around the nest.

The gardener has dug out the irises and the flower bed is looking very tidy.

The gardener told me that he has removed the old and decrepit rosemary bush - this is it's "footprint". He will plant something else there. 

As I was about to leave a bird caught my eye. (Art group bird project?) It posed...

then pecked at the moss...

and was joined by a friend for a while. 

Seed pods by the pond. 

Figs

Grapes shriveling up. 

Thank you very much for joining me.