Wanders in the wintering woods...

The last lingering colours of autumn in the wood... and I feel as wordless as the woods sinking into the quiet of their wintering, so this may be a post of more pictures than words.

These pictures were from the last days of October... now in late November the leaves are a rich copper carpet underfoot and the branches are almost bare. There is the slow undertow of water in earth, entangled roots deep grasping, dying down of bracken and briar. Winter sun low and golden.

 The birch trees are so beautiful in every season, layered in light, delicately trembling...

Birch in late October

 Birch in November floating in layers of gold lace

'I whispered to the birch...
My breath crept up into a world of shudderings.
Was she veiled?
Herself her own fountain
She pretended to be absent from it, or to be becoming air
Filtering herself from her fingertips,
Till her bole paled, like a reflection on water,
And I felt the touch of my own ghostliness...'

- From 'Trees' by Ted Hughes

The Oaks too I love.
Our woods are full of tall ancient oak trees - mossy-coat giants breathing to their own deep slow rhythm.

 

 

 

And because I never got around to posting these next ones at the time, here's the woods back in September and some of our adventures in them...

Just had to show you these huge skies.....

Elswyth (above) loves the woods and often wanders her own way singing beneath the spreading boughs...

While Elora finds adventures around every trunk...!