Ah, nature!

The week included a trip to Kew Gardens for the purpose of drawing. But we spent a lot of time looking at trees ... I have a fascination for Swamp Cypress with its knobbly roots - known as knees - that may help the waterlogged tree to breathe -

 These roots belong to a Mexican Cypress -

These ...

 ... became this -

The little blob is definitely not a squished insect!

 Inveterate collector, I found seeds and other bits on the ground

 and took them home, to spend time looking hard at them -

 A forgotten bag containing an earlier collection yielded these -

for subsequent observation and recording, though I forget what they are. Larch and alder and oak and London plane are among them, but what are the long dark ones?

The strong winds have sent pairs of reddened crabapples cascading from a tree round the corner, but those on another street, a different variety, clung tightly -

 And the back garden at Tom's has had a deluge of apples from the tree next door, each with signs of a resident insect and some with a bruise. Two grandmothers spent a congenial hour collecting, chopping and peeling (and discarding) and making apple puree to be frozen for porridge and/or for the grandbaby -