A long overdue week of abstinence from the European Alps, diplomatically requested by my mother, saw us back in Birmingham, England, just the once in 2008. It was after all Christmas! A year away is too long and the telephone is not the same, we all agreed. Within walking distance from her house is the admirably well preserved Sutton Park, home to a fantastic variety of trees of all shapes and sizes. A scientist with a grasp of Chaos Theory might be able to find a mathematical pattern behind the twisted, gnarly disorder here, but I was just content to take pictures. It felt good to rediscover a place that I had taken for granted for three decades of my life. Thanks mum for that, but actually so much more.

To avoid the irritating clock between pictures, these images have been arranged to "front-load" rather than one at a time.
They will therefore take a short while to appear, depending on your computer. But you can read the text in the meantime!
"Music" taken from http://www.freesound.org/index.php