I love beech trees in the spring - their leaves are just fantastic!

The 'ordinary' beech, the green leaved variety are such an amazing colour - vivid, bright, yellow-y lime green so paper thin when they emerge from the bud that you could almost believe you could see through them. They keep their colour for quite some time before they grow old and dull.

But their cousin the copper beech are just on another scale in terms of beauty! Their fresh, new leaves are stunningly beautiful. They are almost the colour of flesh when they emerge. Then they unfold and spread out they begin to change to a shade that is hard to describe but is somewhere between burnished copper and a vintage red wine....

Trees are an integral and precious part of our ecosystem... as well as being exquisitely stunning.

A tree featured in my thoughts today... or maybe I should say a structure that was originally from a tree...

Good Friday - a curious name to give such a dark and forlorn day.

I was transported back to Jerusalem - immediately. To the smells and the crowds. To the hustle and bustle of the tiny covered streets. To the noise and the smells. To the jostling... I'm glad I wasn't jeered...

Hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered