Bartimaeus

I had a walk with my niece Sandra from Colinton last weekend, along the Water of Leith and the canal. We started from Colinton so the wind would be behind us and not in our faces, not that it was a very strong or cold wind. I spotted a mural as we went down steps towards the river and she told me it was new.

The subject was not modern and the colours were muted. The barrow full of neeps made me think this was depicting an autumn day too. Though painted mostly in soft browns, it still brightens a narrow set of steps.

Sandra gave me a seasonal gift of a handmade felt poppy, by her own fair hand, which I attached to my navy fleece by its pin, making me a bit more colourful too. When we reached Viewforth we peeled off towards Bruntsfield but I stopped to look towards the Leamington lift bridge. There were some bright boats moored here with their own private space and coloured wooden huts alongside.

The weather has been unseasonably mild. The trees still know it is autumn and are fluttering their warm leaves around. In my walks into town I find the cherry trees are almost as beautiful at this time of year than they are when in blossom. I think I have usually been too busy working, or not in Edinburgh, to notice.

The gardens nearby have a lot of red berries on show, rowans, holly, escalonia and crab apple trees, but there are quite a gew flowers still and some creeping out of the gardens into the pavement.

While orange leaves and red berries are typical of autumn and there are lots of them around, I have met a new bigger berry this week. I had to check my plant identifier app as I hadn't seen it before. It called it a Greek strawberry tree and it certainly looked to be surviving well in the Athens of the North.