2nd NOVEMBER 2020

Leaf shadows on trunk of tree in Autumn. 2nd November 2020.

What have I seen today?

That which I enjoyed the most were the shadows of leaves on the trunk of a tree.

When I first moved to Halifax (in West Yorkshire) I found a site where you can type in your post code and it will tell you the air quality. Halifax is a very busy town with lots of lorries and buses and cars. I anticipated the score would be low; a sad contrast, I expected, with the air I was used to in Dorset where I had lived right by the sea. But no. It came out surprisingly high. Pretty healthy stuff. I was pleased; but puzzled.

Autumn  Woods, Mount Pellon, Halifax, West Yorkshire. 2nd November 2020.

A few days ago I went on a short journey into Lancashire to visit The Forest of Bowland. It isn't a 'forest'  in the usual sense of non-stop trees - but it is very beautiful. On the way home I was entertained to see that the notice which announced I was re-entering Calderdale (this part of West Yorkshire) had a description written on it. Calderdale, it turns out is 'Ruggedly sophisticated'. My new image! The best of all worlds. I really am not sure about the 'sophisticated' bit but 'rugged' it certainly is. So rugged, so up and down, with so many steep drops in inconvenient places - there's plenty of room for trees where houses simply couldn't be. They are frequently in 'cloughs', the local word for a steep sided valley or ravine. Sometimes, often, you don't know they are there but these trees must have a huge impact on our air quality.

Autumn woods, Mount Pellon, Halifax, West Yorkshire. November 2nd 2020.

This morning, I was pottering around in the Mount Pellon area of Halifax - and that's where I saw the leaf shadows . . . and lots of autumn trees!

Path in woods under tall railway arch. 2nd November 2020

I also went under this huge arch belonging to a disused railway line.

Seedling on mossy wall. 2nd November 2020

And back up in the light . . . found this seedling growing out of a mossy wall. This seedling is almost as amusing as the 'ruggedly sophisticated' slogan because it has the air of being the kind of seedling that would want to grow into a really large plant if only it weren't sticking out of a wall . . . and if only it were a different time of year . . . and . . . it looks like a squash seedling, though perhaps it's a sunflower. Can anyone say?

This afternoon I went out to look at a patch of tiny toadstools. They are spread over an area about two foot square, are white and each one is only about a centimetre across. You can see how small they are by comparing them with the size of the sycamore leaf. I put them on iSpot and a couple of people have already suggested they are 'Ivory Bonnet' (Mycena flavoalba). They are probably right - though I thought the tops of 'bonnet' fungi tended to be more pointy than these.

Tiny white toadstools close up. Possible Ivory Bonnet.
(Mycena flavoalba) 2nd November 2020

Well, that was today! I hope you have had a good day too.

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