Wintery rambles

My fave wintery plant is this red-berried delight, which I snapped outside the front of a house in the backstreets of the foothills. I don't know its name, so I have nicknamed it Japanese holly. The leaves aren't prickly, but the berries are a burning red and make one feel most cheerful.



I bent my steps towards a shrine, tucked-away above curly-roofed houses, frozen cabbage patches and a creaky woodshed.* The snow-dusted steps led me to the cantankerous gaze of two guardian lion-dogs (koma-inu), who appeared to be unimpressed by their newly acquired manes of snow.



The shrine was peaceful but for the occasional slide and thump of falling snow, now melting in the sunlight. Lumps of ice bobbled in the fount, like sucked ice-cubes in a cocktail. What a stunning scene it was: the snowy-capped lantern, the arched, glittering bough bent over the pathway to the shrine, and all dripping with ice.


The gap in this torii gate made an intriguing windowframe. I like the contrast of the smooth stones with the rough bark and needles in the background, and the conflicting symmetries of stone and wood.



*There's something nasty in the woodshed, Robert Poste's child!