Seedy

The river at Croome has some magnificent plane trees growing along its banks - you can see a couple of them on the far side of the bridge in this blip - and when R and I were walking there a couple of weeks ago we brought home this seed head. To be entirely honest, I didn't know what kind of trees they were and wanted to use the fruit to identify them, and luckily a quick interwebs image search for "british tree spiky ball seed head" immediately produced the relevant information. R has pointed out that it looks like a tiny version of one of those clove-studded oranges which people who are more domesticated than I am produce at Christmas - though in my limited experience those are smellier, and don't disintegrate if you squeeze them.

On the subject of Croome, I forgot to mention yesterday that I've put my favourite images from my walk last Friday on Facebook, if you're interested.

We've had the great pleasure of welcoming both of the Offspring home this evening. This is a fairly unusual occurrence these days - especially in the middle of the working week - but one of their presents to me on my Big Birthday last month was what they described as the Gift of Time: we'll be spending the day together tomorrow, and going to a concert by one of my favourite pianists, for which they've bought tickets. I'm feeling very blessed!