Still Autumn

The forecast is for very cold weather so, as the sun was shining at breakfast time, we went over the road to our local park. We are so lucky to have the park so near the house, with avenues of old trees and wide views over the centre of Sheffield.

The woods are still golden, with the Turkey Oak Drive dropping leaves and fuzzy acorns all over the wide drive, and chestnuts occasionally casting a yellow handkerchief to float slowly to the ground. But the majestic old beeches are still an authumn wonder, holding on to their coppery leaves, . We stood for some time under one of these great trees with its smooth, grey-green trunk, trying and failing again and again to catch twelve leaves for twelve lucky months. Phill caught two golden beech leaves, but I only managed to retrieve a crumpled and ancient leaf which I couldn't identify as it lightly landed on my shoulder.

There were few people about, just a scattering of panting runners and a few adults gently exercising their dogs or just their ancient legs. How I admire very elderly people, obviously living on their own, with perhaps just the company of a dog, who determinedly walk round this park.

Sheffield is one of the greenest cities, with many parks and tree-lined streets. We are very lucky to have landed in this area where we have so many parks and open woodlands, and even a Botanical Gardens, with the Peak District National Park on our doorstep.

We have found a local printer who works in a small unit opposite the Sheffield United football ground, and he has scanned some of my tree portraits and printed them on heavy paper, very close to giclee, but not so expensive. I am very pleased with his work, and I can now use these scans myself for exhibition entries, the website and my own prints and cards, although I will go to Geoff for prints for exhibitions and for sale.

I am now working on capturing the Autumn sunlight through the increasingly bare trees both in the park and on longer walks in Chatsworth Woods and the valleys of Derbyshire and South-East Cheshire. These smaller works are interesting exercises while I wait for the next Ancient Oak to demand my attention.

I would like to embark on the Brownhill Oak in Chatsworth Woods, but I feel a need to revisit it for more photographs and a longer soak in its atmosphere.

I wish there was some way of communicating the size of these great trees in my drawings, as I revisit photos of them with Phill standing next to their massive trunks, under their spreading branches, dwarfed by their presence.

I have been reading on line about Ancient Oaks, making a country-wide wish list of those new ones I would like to visit, while making time to revisit the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, The Old Man of Calke Abbey, the Brownhill Oak in Chatsworth Woods, and other ancient oaks in Chatsworth grounds. As the winter reveals once again the structure of these majestic trees without the green covering of leaves, I will try once more to capture their unique characters, and maybe make some new friends among these historic features of our countryside.