A quiet and undemanding walk in the oak woods today. Life seems at its lowest ebb at the moment, even the colours seem to have gone into hiding to escape the bitter winds blowing down from the mountains with their sugary sprinkling of snow. A red deer roars in the distance, the alarm call of a jay, the whisper of a blackbird’s wing as it flies past me to disappear in the juniper scrub. There are long months of cold ahead, but nature never really stops. On the woodland floor, new leaves are already appearing, taking shape, growing. Their time will come.