An ode to sleeping trees...

Here we are, in bleak mid-winter, and as is their wont, all the trees are resting. Long gone are their soft spring time blossoms, and their glorious green leaves which provided shady canopies on so many hot summer days. Gone too is their magnificent multicolour demise. Each and every leaf has long since floated down to the ground to meet its mulchy, decaying destiny. And so, perhaps, we forget about the trees for a season. All that remains are their tired old branches, bare and dull, not worthy of a glimpse, certainly not deserving of a good long stare...

Or are they? I've always liked watching the lacy silhouettes that winter trees make on the horizon of distant fields when I speed past on a train. And as their leafy disguise vanishes for the year, I like to spy out bird's nests and marvel at the twiggy constructions which have been patiently put together piece by piece by tiny beaks. And so, this weekend, on a sunset walk to the lake I started paying even more attention to the sparse, but not unspectacular branches and here is some of what I saw....

Trees of all shapes and sizes, their branches like calligraphy against the inky evening sky, scratching out paths, making marks, delicate skeletons blowing in the breeze...

Trees that looked as if they were adorned with tiny baubles to mark a winter festival all on their own...

And which contrasted completely with the feathery neighbours that reach out their delicate branches nearby...

I saw trees of all shapes and sizes, forming determined black lines on the watercolour wash of a sky which emerged behind them as the sun sunk below the horizon once again...

The willows gracefully wept their bare branches over the lake whilst the ducks swam on by regardless...

Whilst this crazy silhouette looks like contorted hand, reaching up its many spindly fingers into the air, like lightening in reverse, powerfully defying gravity...

There were tall skinny ones...

And trees scarred and mutated by human intervention, all stumpy and mishapen...

Each branch was a potential perch for birds to roost in and their spindly, but substantial nets spread out over the skyline like embers on a dying fire which glowed defiantly behind them in the last moments of this twilight display...

These two birds had the best view over the whole lake and beyond, their black silhouettes marking them out on top of their lookout...

So next time you're outside, why not admire the trees, because they really are rather wonderful, even whilst they're asleep.....
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