David

Two narrowboats moored near Compton Lock on a frosty morning recently.

Mastadon, though not the Santas on its roof, can just about be seen behind the boat with the penguin figurehead and shark decoration.

A fungus which does look remarkably like pieces of discarded orange peel.

There’s a crop of them every autumn around the base of one of the trees very near the Conservatory in West Park.

This year, the “pieces of peel” (the fungus’s fruiting bodies) were smaller and more numerous than normal.

A plant still flowering right on the edge of the canal at Wightwick a month ago.

A delicate mushroom lurking in the short grass by the canal towpath near Castlecroft.

The leaves of a bush in a front garden had turned a mixture of vivid reds and yellows.

The bark of the trunk was peeling in a complex pattern.

There was even a deep blue sky – rare enough this year.

The same fly agaric mushroom, now more fully spread than here
or here.

I thought it had been kicked over, but it took much longer to shrivel that it would have if someone had kicked it.