Red keys

I don't know what this tree is - there is a label on it, but there's a slippery steep bit on the hill just above it and I was disinclined to go scrambling today - but I've been watching its colour turn more and more intense over the past couple of weeks. The red bits are like the 'keys' on a sycamore; they're seeds in bright, wing-like casings and there are hundreds of them.  Even on a dull afternoon like today (and how I long for it to be sunny again!) they glow.

A word on dull afternoons and walks therein: I've decided that it's much better to walk among green spaces - gardens, like this one, or wild hillsides or glens - than along coasts with grey sea merging into grey sky. The green becomes even more vivid in low light, and the scents of the wet trees and shrubs are pretty intoxicating. And that, of course, is why I keep walking here and blipping from here ...

And it's still a strangely midge-free summer. Really.