Respite from black and white

Under the bright sky, the shadows in the white snow look blue, but on a dull day almost everything in our local landscape is monochrome. By the seventh or eighth week of winter you start to long for a splash of colour to liven up the grayscale, but if you look carefully there is colour to be found on our river bank, in these dried up grasses, for example.

Further on, you can let your eyes feast on the willow tree on the opposite bank, its twigs a smudge of ochre brown. In the spring, the buds on willow trees will be the first to break into leaf, when we can look forward to the relief of seeing a hint of green in the same spot.

Seen from across the river, the low wall in this photo, painted green, used to be the edge of a public swimming pool (that contained river water). The swimming pool has been gone for years; it's where the New Edinburgh Park tennis courts are now.