Wolves Wild

For that Christmas-card mood, holly leaves with frost on their edges. It must have been a male bush, so no berries.

Penk near its source as it passes through a green space on the border of Tettenhall Wood and Perton. Early-morning frost covers the vegetation on the banks of the recently deculverted section of the stream.

Sticky horse chestnut buds already developing at the start of December. The tree is by Castle Walk in Bridgnorth. Perhaps the early spring growth is because of a milder climate coming up the Severn valley.

December raspberries and raspberry leaves, lightly frosted early in the morning after a cold night.

Mist swirling from the canal by Compton Lock later on the same winter’s morning as the scenes featured in posts yesterday and the day before.

Beetle on the trunk of a tree. There may have been another one ahead of it, hiding in the crack in the bark.

Views approaching the aqueduct carrying the Smestow Brook over the canal, taken a little later on the wintry morning that this post.

Views in both directions along the canal at Newbridge, early one morning last week with bright sun shining through mist after overnight frost.

The autumn leaves of this smoke bush (cotinus) have featured in earlier posts when they were enhanced by the water left by overnight rain.

This is how they looked with an edging of early-morning frost.

Fly agaric mushrooms which have popped up yards from the ring road / Chapel Ash roundabout in late autumn for several years.

West Park is planted so that there is some interest at any time of year. Several mahonia shrubs flower as autumn gives way to winter.

Skeletal remains of umbellifer seed heads serving as scaffolding for spider’s webs, all outlined with rime on a frosty morning. These were by the infant Penk at Penk Rise.