Late November

The afternoon began with work but nature soon took over, and the work can wait ’til tomorrow.

A talk I’m doing on Tuesday at the University as part of a ‘Teach Out programme of alternative learning on strike days’ left the house with me, in the format of a mind map I’d work on as I walked. My usual way of thinking. And work on it I did for a while. Thinking, stopping, notebook out, adding to, moving on. Until the late November afternoon took over and turned into this set of photographs.

I love these kinds of afternoons. Still and dark, the sun seeming to have barely risen all day. Autumn turning to winter now, with more leaves on the ground than there are left on the trees.

“On the trees.”

After all these decades of walking around, trees are mostly still trees to me. Not so to my partner Sarah though, who walks into a glade of trees like she’s opening an encyclopaedia.

Sarah Horton
“I’m going for a walk in Calderstones if you want to come with me?”

So I put my work away and went to Calderstones with Sarah. Calderstones being a feast of trees. Described from now on by Sarah, you’ll be glad to hear.

Gorgeous duo of *Taxodium* (Swamp Cypress) and *Metasequoia* (Dawn Redwood).

Turning to brown now and will soon all be on the ground…

Forming a soft brown carpet of feathery leaves.

A tulip tree – *Liriodendron* (in the Magnolia family). Actually named after the flowers (which are a bit like a tulip), but I always think the leaves look like tulips.

Unidentified yellow leaved tree…. bright today in the grey November afternoon.

The last leaves of Sweetgum (*Liquidambar styraciflua*).

Bark of a *Cryptomeria japonica* (in the Cupressus family).

*Acacia dealbata* – or Mimosa – covered in buds which will open bright yellow in early spring.

In the English Garden, the lovely lichen and moss covered brick wall.

Quiet in here now, and we leave though the side gate…

Where there is a lovely *Nothofagus* tree (Southern or Antarctic Beech), it’s not labelled so possibly *N. betuloides*.

Walking round the perimeter of the park we could see across where the orchid houses used to be to the now empty greenhouse where the Calderstones themselves had been stored until recently. Across Mr Roscoe’s Garden, in fact, in a story we’ve told before if you want to read it.