Yesterday morning was a beautiful blue sky morning, and I took the opportunity of a free morning to go to Sneyd Woods, keen to see the trees now we’re in November, and to see how the art work we’d left there a week ago had changed with time and with the weather.
As always I loved the walk there, past fields of horses, into the woods, enjoying the glorious colours of the beech leaves.
The beech leaves are stunning, always beautiful, but this time of year they can be quite breathtaking, a joy to stand under the trees and look up to the sky.
The ivy branch, which had carried recent beautiful additions, had fallen. Maybe it wasn’t strong enough to hold the pieces we’d added. At first I felt disappointed, looked briefly to see whether I could fix it back up, but then I began to like its new shape. Remembering that there’s constant change in nature.
I went on down to the fallen beech trees, where I’ve enjoyed so many hours these last 6 months, since late March. The forestry commission have been here, with their power tools, it must have been last week.
The trunks and branches have been sawn up.
Initially I felt sad. But I sat for a while with the sawn trunks, hoping that people had passed by, stopped and enjoyed the words, hopefully inspired to rest and maybe reflect on the beautiful, peaceful beech trees that make this quiet place so special.
I wondered whether I could take a part of the sawn branches home, to have in my garden and work with. They are very heavy. I took just a couple of smaller branches with me.
I have enjoyed seeing how the colours of the text have changed over time, darkened.
I do think the folk with their power tools stopped and read some of my words, leaving some of them in tact. Not all of them, I don’t want to add the photo of it, but one of my favourite words had been sawn right through…
Most of Wendy’s beautiful bouquet had gone, as we’d expect, I enjoyed adding to it.
I left the woods feeling pleased I’d enjoyed so many hours in this special place, that both on my own and with friends we’d collaborated with these trees, had a bit of a project. And I have a lot of preserved beech leaves, hundreds in fact, and several bottles of beech leaf gin.