The thing about doing something over and over and over again is that you begin to notice more and more and more of the detail.
Take driving to work. I used to drive to Cambridge from Bedford and en route there were countless verges, motorway banks, arable fields, a large cemetery, a pastoral parkland, animal inhabited meadows, trees and of course residential gardens. Day after day after day you begin to see things as they changes, the trees blossoming in late winter, the first green leaves unfurling in the early spring and the blush of summer as the season moves inexorably forward. The delight of seeing carpets of ox eye daisy lining the roadways and even blocks of escaped rapeseed glowing it’s fluorescent yellow for a week or two, mounds of daffys nodding, following on from the swathes of snowdrops. Big and small trees, statuesque and glorious as they seamlessly change their seasonal coats. Of course summer is abundant and though sometimes parched, other times it’s damp and lush but lacking in vibrant colours other than green. Then autumn arrives, full reds, rich yellows and golden browns fill the spaces, followed by the bare stems of winter, which lately are quite bright themselves (Cornus and Willow). Then spring comes again and we start all over. Year by year it moves and year by year it differs. The joy is seeing the diversity even within the usual seasons and the transformations within the seasons themselves.
Autumn colour in Bedfordshire is brilliant and by that I mean the colour is brilliant, vivid, spectacular. Someone has thought carefully about the mix and match and the roadsides, parks and public places show off quietly for those who look.
Next time you’re sitting in traffic take a glance about and notice your surrounding vegetation for tomorrow it will have changed and next month will be unrecognisable….