I found some magical jewels, do you want to see?

It would be false of me to say that seeing the world afresh through your children’s eyes and stopping to look at tiny details with them on a walk or in the garden is completely wholesome and joyful. Spending ten minutes on a cold rainy day greeting each snail we meet when we are already running late on the school run or constantly having my coat pocket full of ‘special’ stones and beautiful (for beautiful read ratty and muddy) feathers can be irritating.

But over the past few years I have tried more than ever to stop and share in their moments of wonder as I have realised that it is something that is so rare and precious as an adult that I want to chase it wholeheartedly. As a constantly tired mum of two my moments of wonder currently seem to be along the lines of ‘I wonder if that crack in the bathroom ceiling is getting bigger’ or ‘I wonder what the odd noise the boiler’s making means?’. So when one of my kids tells me to stop and look at a some moss on a drainpipe that looks like a whale, I’m going to try harder to stop and really look for that sweet mossy whale!

This feeling really hit me like a slapstick style rake to the face incident a few months ago when we were on holiday in Wiltshire. We decided to go to visit a historic house in the area that the guidebook in the cottage we were staying in recommended. The kids were less than enthusiastic as they were tired from the drive the day before and I was really just pinning my hopes on a very large cup of coffee in the café to give me the energy to rally the troops for the day. I could hear the unconvincing tone in my voice when I told them for the twentieth time it was going to be brilliant and we’d be much warmer once we got moving.

The place we visited was called Bowood House and Gardens, a beautiful house owned by the Lansdowne Family since 1754, set in the vast grounds designed by Capability Browne. There is an Arboretum full of the most incredible trees with hundreds of varieties and rare trees that were dropping their leaves to make a patchwork quilt of colour for us to walk over. Once I had found the café, inhaled a much needed coffee and supplied the required amount of snacks to my grumpy fellow travellers we headed out to the gardens.

We got the trail, you know the trail that ever kind museum or stately home has on offer to help tired parents get their kids to walk around the place without wanting to turn back after forty seconds. But we soon forgot about the trail completely and suddenly we were in a sea of leaves of the most vibrant colours and interesting shapes. Without talking about it, we all starting finding ones to show each other. Gigantic leaves, skeleton leaves, bright acid yellow leaves, leaves that looked like flames and leaves with seeds attached. We began spotting fungi in different shape and colours and even the red toadstools with white dots on like the ones you imagine could only really appear in children’s picture books. Before we knew it we had walked for an hour and a half and the tiny legs were still going strong.

We headed into a walled garden area to find somewhere to have lunch. It feels like a secret garden you have stumbled into planted with herbs, seasonal cut flowers, sensory planting and a rose walk. It was late October but there was still so much colour in the planting and some beautiful fragrances as we walked through.Then my littlest tugged on my coat sleeve and said ‘I have found some magic jewels, do you want to see?’ He pulled me over to a bush on the other side of the path and there I stood and actually involuntarily gasped at what he had found. A plant with berries on in the most remarkable colours that the didn’t look real. They were exactly as he said, magic jewels just hanging there in front of us all and I had never seen them before. The range of blues and purples were so strange together and stood out amongst the green of leaves behind them. I got the same feeling the kids get when they see something exciting they want to share, I wanted to tell everyone around, ring friends to come join us, drag passers-by over to see what we had discovered.

After a bit of research we discovered they were a wild grape also known as porcelain berry. Ampelopsis glandulosa var. brevipedunculata to its friends. I took loads of photos as by then no one had the patience for me to sketch them there and then and I wanted to try and remember them as clearly as I could. It was such a strong feeling seeing them for the first time. It shook me out of a sleepy fog and I almost didn’t dare walk away as they seemed too precious to just leave hanging there.

This weekend I was going through my old photos and spotted them again. I realised I hadn’t got chance to draw them yet so decided to have a go. I think it’s interesting that I found the colour mixing for the berries so hard, the blues are really unique. It shows how unbelievable and spectacular nature is to have made them. I made a point of hunting them down at Kew Gardens when we went later in the year just to see if they were as fabulous as I remember them. Dear Reader, they are. I have since learnt that in the USA they are an invasive species and these little jewelled plants although beautiful are not welcome. It is a vigorous vine which spreads easily and the berries are scattered by birds so it needs close management and control. Those magical little berries are alluring for a reason and are brilliant at their job. But I’m grateful for their reminder to me to slow down and look more closely.

I have been thinking a lot about where we find wonder as an adult and what AI will do to our collective sense of wonder in the future. With social media already saturated with videos of made-up landmarks in far-off lands, what happens when we arrive in a country and find it just simply stunning and unique but missing the giant ancient castle in the pictures? Will we still gasp at the skill and wonder of live dancers in unison when we’ve seen false versions of them perform at great heights in their hundreds dangling from tall buildings in AI clips on instagram? Perhaps I’m adding to the problem and I shouldn’t put these pictures up here and just leave you to stumble across the berries in a garden one day like I did if you haven’t already? Does seeing so much on a screen mean we wont find things as full of wonder in real life?

What was your last wonderful wonder-filled discovery?

Art Materials - Derwent Pencils, Derwent graphite, acrylic ink and Caran D'ache Luminance coloured pencil. Sketchbook from Royal Talens.

Location - Bowood House and Gardens, Wiltshire and Kew Gardens, Richmond London.

Something to make you wonder this week - Curious Cases Podcast - Frosty Fractals