Tuesday 30th January- I spy with my little eye...

 'Let's go and have a Cornish pasty for lunch at Nymans Gardens ' sez I.

It was just before noon, a gloriously sunny day and not as appalling cold as it has been recently. 

So off we go. but...

When we arrived at the entrance gates there was a girl bundled up in layers of warm clothes, thick work boots, scarf, hat, gloves, standing by a notice

THE CAR PARK IS FULL, PLEASE DO NOT QUEUE

She had a sympathetic smile and was signalling that we should drive on - to where?

I had once worked at a school further down the road and knew we could turn at the pub. In the end we did turn, but instead of retracing our route just kept going, along lanes, through villages, past farms, until we found our way home again. 

I made a classy macaroni cheese with bacon and onion and peas and sweet corn all I the cheese sauce. Not a Cornish pasty, but pretty good all the same.

Along the way I spied trees (obviously), these trees in particular;

From top to bottom 

A plane tree... I was searching through my memory to identify the tree, then remembered the months either side of Christmas 2013 when I had several overnight stays at the Brompton hospital for tests. The ward was on the top floor level with the plane trees that lined the streets.

A ruthlessly pollards mature tree, I'm not sure if it is an oak or a beech, just by the local shop. This could be a candidate for 'following a tree' 2026, as the willow by the duck pond that I had my eye on was taken down recently. 

Several weeping willows near us have green leaves.  Surely they must left over from this year? 

There's a willow in someone's garden further down our road where the thin branches are bright orange., like a fire. When I used to travel all over the country from school to school there were things I used to watch for; one was a place where a couple of willows blazed red and orange, a shocking display of colour in an otherwise drab countryside.

On the road back from Nymans I was really pleased to see a rookery that I didn't know about, just a few, maybe half a dozen nests. Goody goody; I used to watch the progress of several rookeries on my commutes. 

It's probably a good thing I've stopped driving; there's far too much scenery to see.