Sense of scale, treasure house and checking the colour.

1. We pass boys in blazers walking home from the grammar school. The first years are tiny under their huge rucksacks. Then I look at Alec in his pram and they seem like giants.

2. On a grey day of blurry rain, the bright fresh colours of fruit and vegetables in the cavernous green grocers are very appealing.

3. While I am feeding Alec, Nick brings my cake in so I can see if it is properly browned.

4. There was a romanesco cauliflower in our veggie box. We spend some time after supper admiring its mathematical spirals and pinnacles.

Picture from Stock.xchng

Keep talking, smoker and parcel postman.

Drew has posted three beautiful things over at Panic I'm Nearly 30. Do let me know if you write your own beautiful things -- despite all the upheavals, and my current obsession with one particular baby, I am still interested to hear the best things about people's days.

1. I like the way whenever my chiropractor does an even slightly painful adjustment (which is very rarely) she says: "Still speaking to me?"

2. The automatic doors flap open. And shut. She stands just out of the rain hunched into her collar. Then her head pops up and she sets off, trailing a wisp of cigarette smoke the exact colour of her long blue coat.

3. A very wet and miserable postman brings a parcel during lunch. It's addressed to Nick, and he won't open it until he's finished eating, by which time I am nearly dying from curiosity. It's a gift from his work -- a hat box of bits for a baby boy, including a blue fleece blanket, a rattling rabbit, and a tiny pair of shoes.

Blue hat, great grandmother and progress.

1. Fenella visits, bringing encouraging words and an offer of babysitting -- it means a lot to have a diligent and skilled mother willing to do this for us. She also brings some clothes, including Alec's first blue item: a knitted hat the colour of hyacinths. We put it on for his walk round the park. It suits him so well that we (very) briefly consider Hyacinthus as a middle name.

2. Granny Pat comes round to meet her first great grandson. He was born on my late grandfather's birthday, which pleases her very much. She salutes Alec smartly, and tells Nick "I was in the army for two years."

3. We're getting on better with the feeding -- mainly thanks to lanolin and a very supportive husband. Nick administers the Infacol, helps with positioning and records the time and length of each session in a notebook. He winds Alec afterwards, and gives us tonnes of praise. Our first 20-minute feed made me feel on top of the world. Alec just burped.

Footprints, through the snow and feeding on fruit.

1. Lines of paddy paw prints over the snowy carpark clue me in on the night life.

2. The doorbell rings. The triumphant Abel and Cole man hands over our veggie box.

3. Each cluster of pale orange rowan berries is weighed down by snow. The high branches are weighed down by feasting wood pigeons.

Little brown job, turkeys and puppy.

1. "Sort of skulking?" "Yes, and picking bits out from between the paving stones." "That's a dunnock." Another of our home birds identified.

2. My parents' neighbour has four turkeys in a pen in the woods. They are pleased to see us and come to the fence to show off their green-black plumage. One of the males fans out his tail for us.

3. He brings his great dane puppy out to meet us. Its colour makes me think of a batch of biscuits -- pale gold to soft tan. He says its spent the short afternoon testing the boundaries of his garden.

Flowers, stretching and red on white.

Today is our first wedding anniversary. It's hard to believe it's been a year already. I don't think I've ever been more content in my life. We'll be returning to the hotel where we tied the knot later on today for afternoon tea.

Nick and I have been so touched by all the love and support we've had from the people close to us, and from people who haven't met us face-to-face. I love this picture because when I saw it, it brought home how much effort people made to come to our wedding, and also the fact that they cared enough about the memory of it that they wanted to take pictures.

1. The anniversary itself is on Sunday, but we've sort of stretched out the celebrations across the whole weekend. Nick brings flowers back from town. He says he picked this bunch "because the white ones reminded me of the white roses in your wedding bouquet." The white ones turn out to be ornamental cabbages -- creamy white, flushed mauve in the centre with tiny beads of green on the edge of each petal.

2. Doing a few cat stretches to help BB get into position. I'll be considered full term on Tuesday.

3. Deep red cayenne pepper scattered over white cauliflower cheese.

Spindle, better and sound effects.

1. A spindle tree with the orange seeds just bursting out of the pink cases cheers me up as I struggle up the hill across the park.

2. "I feel so much better for that," I tell my yoga teacher at the end of the class.

3. By chance I come across an old friend on Radio 4 -- a thriller adapted from Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book. It is beautifully done in terms of sound effects and voice acting. The Empress, in particular, is astonishing  -- refined and restrained and authoritative all at once.

Contrast, find the baby and no trouble.

1. It's such a bright beautiful day. The woods are wearing rags of autumn colour still, and the contrast with the winter branches makes me want to look and look.

2. The midwife says: "I can feel a back here, and I think this is a bottom up here." She says that I'll get some strange feelings in the next few weeks as Baby Badger grinds its head down into my pelvis.

3. When the time comes to make my next appointment, I ask the mother (who has offered to drive me there) when would be convenient. She shakes her head -- she doesn't mind. The midwife says: "First grandchild is it? Nothing's too much trouble, is it." I'm loving all the attention you get from being pregnant.

End of autumn, woodsmoke and circles.

1. Walking through the park in the rain. Cold air. Cold sky. Warm reds and golds hang on bravely.

2. The smell of woodsmoke on a rainy day.

3. We've been walking in circles all morning, she says in a text. I assume it's a metaphor for a frustrating day. No -- walking round and round holding a couple of Mum's fingers is Ben's new favourite activity.

Retrieval, ripe and first concert.

1. These plums are disappointing. I bake them into Delia's oat and plum slices, which are not.

2. I have my doubts about the replacement plums, too. They are deep aubergine purple -- some of them -- but streaked and shaded with green as if they might not be quite ripe. I pull one out of my shopping bag on the way home. Very sweet, very juicy and very plummy.

3. This piece is pushing the boundaries of music. It's pushing the boundaries of what a clarinet can do, with haunting polyphonics and hysterical screeches. Baby Badger reacts with some hefty kicks that are visible through my dress. "Your first concert," whispers Dad proudly.

Timing, bond and soft colours.

1. To arrive home just as my aunt and cousin come to the gate.

2. Granny Pat says: "I love you, Clare and I love the baby." She is delighted over and over again by the news that I am her grand-daughter, married and carrying her great-grandchild.

3. Cyclamen in dolly-mixture colours, and pale autumn crocuses planted around trees. It's good to see some gentle colours among the deep greens and hot reds and yellows.

After the rain, in the rain and after the show.

1. After the rain, town is as green as a bowl of salad.

2. We go to see Singin' In the Rain -- they have a rain set, and the falling water moves a sigh of cool air across the overheated audience.

3. One of Nick's friends is in town for a wedding. After the show, we go and find him in his hotel.

Pink sky, blackbird and cherry blossom.

1. To wake early in an unfamiliar room and see that the eastern sky is pink.

2. Our blackbird splashing in the puddle by the bins.

3. The cherry blossom is out in our street. Nick says: 'It was just like this when I bought the flat.'

Remember, gentleman callers and our neighbours.

1. Granny Pat remembers my husband. "She said: 'That's Nick Law'," my aunt tells us.


2. Stand still. Willow tit (drab little fellow in a black velvet cap) and nut hatch (black Lone Ranger mask, blue-grey jacket and a waistcoat the colour of the ragged inner bark that clings to sweet chestnut rails).

3. "That bright star on the horizon is Venus," says my uncle. "And at about four o'clock, there's a dimmer one -- that's Mercury. You don't often see them together." Later, as we walk home from the station, we look at the sky again. "Do you see stars, or just dots of light?" Nick asks.

Embroiderer, sugar bowl and jeans.

1. I interview a lady who embroiders tactile copies of famous paintings for people with visual impairments. She uses textures to express temperature and colour. It's fascinating to experience a piece of stitching with my fingertips as well as my eyes. "Try touching it lightly -- it sort of tingles," she says.

2. She brings us coffee -- and her sugar bowl matches the dinner service that I inherited from my grandmother. She tells me that she found a pair of matching egg cups in a charity shop, and that she eats boiled eggs just for the pleasure of using them.

3. Two newly-washed pairs of jeans lounge on the bed, proud of their clean, cold blues (one deep water blue and one shallow water blue).

Improve, pleasing the art editor and purple daisies.

1. To improve a day when everything has gone wrong, I sit down for elevensies with a mug of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie.

2. When I drop off my CD of words and images, the art editor is pleased: "These pictures are beautiful," she says.

3. The doorbell rings. My husband can't get at his keys because his hands are full of purple daisies.

A secret, crocuses and don't move.

1. The Common, with its bare trees and clear ground, seems barren at the end of winter. But it’s smiling in the sunshine as if it has a secret happiness.

2. Crocuses (baby mauve, egg-yolk yellow and whole milk white) have pushed their way through the khaki dead ground in the park. Today, they are the only pure bright colours in all creation (apart from the sky, I mean).

3. The financial advisor comes round, and I ask him a question that has been bothering me for months. He looks over a few pages, taps on his calculator and says that it's best to leave things as they are.

No, sugar and chilli.

Becoming Human has shared the story about advising Inuit on how to dress for winter in the comments of Monday's post.

1. Saying no.

2. "Look at the wheel of death," says Tim, indicating the nutrition information. It's all green, apart from the sugar, which is a glorious red.

3. Men trying to out-chilli each other.

Over the wall, volunteer and fried apples.

1. On our way down to the charity shop, we pass two men talking over a garden wall. The man in the garden sees the crates of books in our arms, and his eyes widen. His gaze follows us as we pass.

2. To look through into the back of the shop and see a cheerful volunteer steam cleaning donated clothes.

3. Frying slices of red apple to go with pork chops -- the white flesh turns caramel brown.

Absorbed, get out and home cooking.

James Alexander-Sinclair from Blackpitts Garden (and Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits) has written a 3BT post (with pictures).

And the 3BT podcast is up.

1. To get absorbed in my work so that time slips away. It's very satisfying to string together words and know that I am being paid for it.

2. Getting out of the flat for half an hour after lunch. The cold air and the vast blue sky are the wake-up I need.

3. I grab a ready meal because I don't want to think about supper tonight. Oven crisped rice, dull curry, no vegetables. I fall in love with my own cooking again.