Winter is coming!

Brockwell Park in summer is a riot of verdant lushness, its trees heavy with leaf, a green paradise, much loved by local people; I have written glowingly about it in the past, dear reader, as you clearly remember. In mid-November, however, the picture is completely different, if equally beautiful to my adoring eyes.

With winter on the way, late autumn is abuzz with colour; some leaves remain on the trees but many are on the footpaths, the grass, everywhere. The trees are starting to look naked, stark and austere, beautiful in an entirely different, slightly haunting and daunting way. This is not, of course, exclusive to Brockwell Park, as some of the photographs of my Sunday jaunt a few days ago would have shown, with trees denuding all over Britain in preparation for the coming of winter.

Some people I know would be happy to always live in a place where the weather stays mild and summery all year around, with little variation. Whilst I sympathise with their feelings I am a firm lover of the changing of the seasons, quick to put on my warm clothes for winter and equally keen in my anticipation of summer heat. Change provides a beauty that is not static, colours coming and going with the dimming or brightening of sunlight, clouds providing a fluffy background, rain (ok, not all the time, please!) refreshing everything and feeding crops for the farming community, though lately it has seemed as if the rains have been overdoing it a touch...

Nature is amazing, awe-inspiring, beautiful; occasionally it can also be destructive, harsh, deadly. Human beings are, perhaps unwittingly, engaged in destroying nature's balance which, scientists suggest would ultimately so upset the balance of the natural order that our world as we know it may cease to function and will no longer exist in the form that we recognise.

I am hugely grateful that I am still able to enjoy the colours, the textures, the feel of the seasons, in Brockwell Park or elsewhere. Rejoice now in the beauty, yes, but let's do something to keep it for our children and their children, for the future.