Flower candles

Dunoon is beautiful with colour just now - the reds and golds and pinks of azaleas, rhododendrons and pieris in gardens up and down the coast - but it's also so cold and, today anyway, wet that wandering in gardens isn't appealing. However, walking is a necessity as far as I'm concerned, which is why I was out in the late afternoon, temperature 9ºC and falling, in rain that had only slightly abated, bashing through Toward Castle grounds more because it got me off the road than anything else.

So this is one of the thousands of tall candles of blossom on the horse chestnut tree just inside the main gate - a huge tree that drops conkers over a wide area in the autumn. It cheered me up, slightly - and gave me something perhaps a level higher than the usual blip of desperation on such days!