SPEAKING OF DECAY

If one is trapped indoors by a new knee and a pair of crutches, well, actually a pair and a half, how do you write a garden blog?

(At this point I should say that three crutches a used - one left at the top of the stairs and one at the bottom as only one is used for going up and down).

So, to start with the decay of leaf litter, there are still beautiful patterns and colours, look closely. Then, if a frost comes, this heightens the detail.

Going backwards to autumn, (I was mobile then), many of the old and diseased leaves had dramatic hues and shapes as with this example of a sycamore.

Some leaves, for example, cercidiphyllum, smell of caramel or toffee.

As the green cellulose degenerates and disappears other hidden colours, yellow and reds come to the fore.

This is particularly noticeable with the maple family.

Unfortunately, though sycamore is a maple, most of its leaves go a muddy brown, If they went a spectacular yellow the British countryside would be fantastic.

But they do not.

Then there are the trees and

shrubs which keep their leaves through the winter, some dead as with beech and to a lesser extent the oak, others living as with this next leaf - Magnolia grandiflora.

The undersides of the evergreen leaves have a wonderful warm hue.

(I just wish that the shrub would flower in the summer - we are still waiting.)

Another dilemma is how to get images for the blog - through the window? Is that cheating? Should I change tack and ramble on about banks, the Euro, politics and other things that seem totally irrelevant as I sit in the garden and decay along with it.

Absolutely not!

This is a Garden Blog not Panorama or Question Time.