When I used to live out in the Hertfordshire countryside, one of my favourite walks (with or without dog) was on a footpath which ran up through a nearby farmyard, then out over the crest of a hill beyond, before winding down into the valley and returning home along the River Lea.

The opening section of that walk gradually drew me from the edge of town where I lived, past the town boundary marker, and then slowly through the farm until all vestiges of human habitation were past and I was in the countryside itself, normally alone.  Just at the edge of the farm, where the farmyard petered out into the open fields, stood this piece of discarded machinery.  I’ve no idea what it was once used for, but I love the way in which the foliage has drawn it into an embrace, slowly reclaiming the iron of the machine into the natural world from which it came.  It seemed a fitting symbol sitting, as it did, on the very cusp of civilisation and countryside.

Machine overgrown with plants