Cotoneaster crown

Several hours of heavy rain made it feel very wintry - a day to stay inside and work. Which was just as well, as Pete and Chris had to submit a major report this afternoon, and I was needed for proof-reading. I also managed to finish one of my own reports! The end of report writing is finally in sight - and hopefully mine will all be out of the way by Christmas, for once!

I managed a dusk walk round the very soggy rowing lake, but the light had virtually gone by the time the rain stopped enough for me to set off. So this is a quick shot of one of the cotoneasters in our front garden - a gift from the birds. For years I hadn't really looked very hard at it, and presumed it was just wall cotoneaster Cotoneaster horizontalis, but in fact it's the rather more grand sounding Hjelmqvist's cotoneaster Cotoneaster hjelmqvistii, which is native to China, and is presumably named after the eminent Swedish botanist Hakon Hjelmqvist who died in 1990.