Country diary: A beauty festooned with nature's baubles

Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: The beautyberry's colour is pure eccentric confidence, pure defianceIt's going to take some willpower to go out there. The winter has put its grey lid on the day, it's -5C and the housing estate I live on is looking particularly dismal - but I know it holds a treasure worth seeing. We bundle me up in as many layers as we can find, manoeuvre me into my wheelchair and gasp as the sharp air finds our lungs. The streets are damp, unnaturally still, and it makes us quiet. "That way," I whisper, pointing.Early afternoon in midwinter is a strange, liminal time on the estate. As we walk, the only people we see have hard eyes and hard faces, and they soon disappear, like the blackbirds who skulk and fly low into the bare municipal hedges. I have steered us down a long row of dark terraces that have tiny paved front areas, each one like a miniature junkyard. Nondescript shrubs battle with bins and empty planters that hold the dried and iced ghosts of summer. There's an abandoned fridge, a sofa spilling its innards, and remarkably few signs of Christmas. "Keep going," I urge, "it's just up here." Continue reading...