My head’s been so full this week, I’ve simply not managed to find the mental space to sort out what I wanted to post, let alone actually sit in front of the computer and put a post together. But I’ve missed it. Blogging has become such a joy and inspiration in my life, I definitely feel an emptiness when I don’t connect with it (and you!) for a few days.

This evening I’ve had the house to myself and it’s been wonderful just to collect my thoughts, take a deep breath…and suddenly find what I wanted to post about.

Winter has definitely arrived and this past couple of weeks have been extremely stormy and changeable. I’ve been admiring all the different graphic shapes and silhouettes of bare northern hemisphere trees…

…and this evening they made me think of a box of leaf skeletons that had belonged to my great-grandfather that I recently rediscovered.

My great-grandfather Heinz spent a lot of time in India in the ’60s, I think, and he must have got these leaves there. The large, heart-shaped leaves are from the same kind of sacred fig tree that Buddha attained enlightenment beneath. They’re so perfectly, delecately gauzy and papery.

Two of the leaves have illustrations on them. Painstaking work! They both look like they’ve been drawn in pen first, and then the woman’s been coloured in. I love them. Like paintings on a butterfly’s wing or drawings on a cloud!

And while we’re looking at leaf and tree skeletons, here are some photos I took of the most recent full moon silhouetting trees like shadow puppet scenery.