I found solace in the old gardens today.  Walking round, the cold air wrapping me in calmness, I started to feel like me again.  The stress washed away as my gaze fell upon bunched daffodils and scattered snowdrops, the budding plants, with the earth soft beneath my feet.

I was drawn to a spray of trees right in the middle of the garden, lining a path like guards.  They must have been trained once upon a time, each bearing a horizontal branch to the left and another to the right with smaller branches springing upwards from them.

The trees looked tired and worn, as though they had spent years stretching their arms skyward, pleading for some sunshine, yearning for their lost youth.  Yet it was the magnificence of their age – their gnarled beauty and non conformed shape – that held my interest.

The saplings nearby, as beautiful and hopeful as they were, paled in comparison.  They had no history, no wisdom … but I know that those old trees, if they could speak, would tell me countless stories.  They encapsulate beauty of a different kind …