Keep in touch, captured and in the window.

Wow, it's photographarama today. First, two beautiful things from my mother.

a. Today a white van came rattling down the track and a small movement in the far top corner of the field turned into an avalanche of sheep pouring towards us bleating anxiously. 'I hope you've brought something for them too' I said to the delivery man. 'How odd' he replied and climbed back into the van... after handing  me the parcel from John Lewis. A natural lambskin for carseats and strollers!

b. Every where has been covered in frost all day and this morning a pure white pheasant appeared on the garden steps, but not for long.


And here are my beautiful things:


1. Two of my friends post on Facebook pictures of their babies. Oli is doing a tarot card series of his son (I particularly like the Tower built from Duplo, and the guest appearance by a big sister as the Priestess); while Paul has posed his little boy in tableaux from famous films. The Good, The Bad and Ugly -- baby in poncho and hat with bread stick hanging off his lip -- leaves me crying with laughter.

2. PaulV comes round and takes the last batch of bump photos -- "The light is lovely," he says, pushing me out of the back door.


2a. Anna sends me home from tea in her office with a plate of scones and gooey chocolate cake.


3. Across the car park, in a top window there is a lit-up Christmas tree. Better than an advent calendar. 

Awake at dawn, bad dream and Sherlock.

1. One of my least favourite pregnancy symptoms is the constant peeing. From the start, I lost the ability to make it through the night -- they say it's preparation for the sleep-deprivation to come. The exact time varies -- but this morning, it was around dawn. The sky was shell pink and streaked with con trails, and I was glad that I had seen it.

2. About ten years ago, I had a back problem that caused pain in my hip. I dreamed that the pain was back, and that I was walking around an unfamiliar town trying to find a shop selling food for supper. The door was always round the next corner, down steps, along a beach, up some steps, under a bridge... Then I woke up, safe at home in bed, and there was no pain.

3. We've been really looking forward to Sherlock -- Mark Gattiss and Stephen Moffat's up-dated re-telling of Sherlock Holmes. I'm really fond of Mark Gattiss, and we know Stephen Moffat from Dr Who, but we felt a bit cautious. I have BBC drama series trust issues after Bonekickers (I know it was 2008, but it was THAT awful). However, it was great. I worked out whodunnit long before the detectives, which for me is an important part of crime drama, and there was a satisfying how- and whydunnit twist at the end. We both felt very welcomed because we recognised the Holmes references. "This is three-patch problem," says Sherlock (played by the lovely Benedict Cumberbatch) covering himself in nicotine plasters.

The sun reveals all, the garden and magnolia.

1. The sun in the yard reveals secrets. Midges dancing in the morning. A thread of cobweb drifting skywards.

2. To mix up bright blue plant food in a watering can and glug it on to the pots and troughs (and the former fridge salad drawer) that are giving me so much pleasure.

3. Thick magnolia petals lie in drifts in the courtyard -- and there's more to come.

Light at last, Hedera helix and fat.

1. Waking up to see a bit of daylight prying itself through the gap in the curtains. Morning work feels like a light bath, and it makes me feel like getting things done.

2. Nick's sister Sarah rings to tell me to expect a plant. A couple of hours later, a man comes to the door. "I've got a very large ivy for you." It's a cone, about the height of a child, and it's perfect for the collection of pots along the sunny wall.

3. It's satisfying to pick off and throw away the fat that has floated to the top of a stew taken from the fridge.

White towels, man with a flan and candlelight.

Some natural history advice from Den -- I love the idea of queen bees sleeping away their pregnancy and waking up in the spring ready to found a dynasty. Ruth marvels at the rainbow colours in a bubble. Both Sweetpea's Garden and Cherry Red write about non-genetic parenting. Lynn shares the story behind her vintage Santa statue. And poor Louisa has to make the best of a bad cold.

1. I put out our new white wedding towels. They are so soft and so fluffy and so clean that it seems wicked to use them to dry myself.

2. Several days ago,Nick declared his intention to make a flan. He shuts himself away in the kitchen and soon the flat starts to smell of cheese and pastry and other savoury things.

3. I like to light a few candles for the supper table.

Long light, jam turnover and soda.

Three Beautiful Things weekly round-up

• Two posts about first snow: A Journal of Days and Glimpses of Grace; while Louisa meets a lady at the chip shop who must content herself with a snow substitute.
• Aisha eats a pomegranate unadorned for the first time.
• Plutarch opens up a whole new world of perfumes, and is unable to resist buying a second apple.
  
• Mary Loves appears to be raising a junior 3BTer with a good eye for sunsets.
  

If you 3BT regularly, please let me know -- I love reading other people's beautiful things.

1. In the middle of the morning, I go out to the bins, and stand astonished (rubbish in my hand) at the golden winter light and long shadows.

2. He makes a jam turnover with the leftover pastry and marks it with our initials. At teatime, I get ticked off for picking the wrong half.

3. Last thing at night, to pour some soda crystals down the sink to keep the drains sweet. I like to break up the lumps in the powder through the plastic bag.

Tomorrow, us together and draw the curtain.

1. I wake up and give Nick a poke on the shoulder. "We're getting married tomorrow."

2. I'm so glad we had a lie in: after 10 o' clock, the phone doesn't stop ringing.

3. I like to go into the spare room, draw the curtain and put the light on, ready for a guest.

4. My chief bridesmaid Louise drives down out of the dark, and the party is complete.

Field trip, sun and off the path.

I have a short piece about biscuits up at Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits.

1. The park at 10.45am is full of girls from a school on the other side of town. They push into the ladies, turning sideways to accomodate their shoulder bags. They are all coatless on a chilly morning, as if they have suddenly been called outside for a moment, and the wet grass soaks their white canvas shoes. They cluster at the top of the hill, looking hungrily down before running shrieking and sliding into the dip. Their teacher (hat, scarf, coat, boots, clipboard) calls out: "If I can hear your voice, it's too loud." They modulate back: "Sorry, Miss."

2. Light comes through the round door glass and through the warm orange curtain. Indoor sun.

3. I leave the path and walk on the grass because I want to shuffle through wet beech leaves.

Red coat, quality of light and in the old days.

1. Seeing a friend's bright red coat at the far end of the street.

2. Yellow gold light has hit the building opposite -- I feel as if I have been greeted with a huge smile.

3. We go to a lecture on what the Weald would have been like in the Cretaceous, when Tunbridge Wells Museum's iguanadon would have been alive. Swampy, apparently. The lecturer puts up a picture of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and says rather sadly: "I've never been there, but I'm told that's what it would have been like." I have been there -- so all comes to life for me. I can imagine the wet heat, and the forests of horsetails growing half in, half out of the water where the dinosaurs come down to drink.

Dress accordingly, work and spotlight.

1. Putting on warm weather clothes after a few chilly days.

2. I find a job ad that piques my interest -- it's part-time, and editorial, working on interesting subject matter for an amazing organisation.

3. Shade falls through the leaves in smudges and splotches. A brown butterfly sits for a moment on a splash of sunlight and is illuminated.

Can't catch me, engine and that's enough.

1. Early in the morning there is a smear of something white -- potato starch, or spilt milk -- on the worktop. But when I try to wipe it off, it turns out to be sunlight creeping round to the dark side of the house.

2. Hearing the steam engine working faster to pull us up a hill.

3. He reaches up and hands the cake back to his mother. She says: 'Lovely: you've licked off the jam, and that's it?'

Attention-seeking, the queue and getting rid.

1. I draw the curtain behind the monitor -- the bright sun makes it hard for me to work. But it still teases me for attention by projecting the pattern of the nets through the curtain.

2. We have to wait a while in the butchers -- but that's all right because it gives us time to decide exactly what we would like. His meat is laid out on antique china platters and dishes.

3. I need more space again. The stack of books in the hall is waist high by the time I've finished.

Trick of the light, cherries and wet wool.

Today is Three Beautiful Things' fifth birthday. I can't quite believe I've been going for five years -- that's 1,825 days, and 5,475 beautiful things (plus a few extra for the days when I couldn't pick just three).

Thanks for reading everyone -- I really appreciate your company and your comments.

For anyone in the Tunbridge Wells area, I'll be at the Guinea Butt on Calverley Road from 6.30pm. Come over and celebrate with me.

1. Sunlight and shadow from the cupressus tree play on the wall outside the kitchen window.

2. Discovering that our nearest newsagents is a source of Polish cherry jaffacakes.

3. The lanolin smell of a wool jumper drying.

Chiaoscuro, drapery and utopia

1. I like the mixture of sun and shade in the gardens along the Embankment.

2. We go to see the Van Dyck exhbition at Tate Britain. I love to see how artists express vibrant coloured silk. Another thing I like about these portraits is the way they engage with the viewer -- there were a lot of eyes following us around the gallery.

3. I come to the end of Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, which I have been enjoying very much. I like utopian science fiction -- particularly if the utopia is put under the microscope. This one is about a physicist trying to work on an idea that his anarchist society need.

Just like that, wafers and my words.

1. The sun, a magician, draws a shadow off the hedge, and the dew vanishes in a puff of steam.


2. Tunnock's Caramel wafers in their red and gold wrappers.

3. Waiting for me at home is a parcel containing the proofs of Three Beautiful Things.

It's time, coming through and all the good things.

1. The giant hornbeam tree that shades the street says -- and the saplings in the hedge agree -- that it's time to start putting out pleated leaves.

2. The whole two miles home is out of the sun -- except where a street heading west lets the red-gold light through to warm the baptist chapel.

3. A parcel comes, a book which one of you readers thinks I would like. It's about affirmations, and it reminds me (as do all your comments, and the growing list of followers) of all the good things I get from writing three beautiful things each day.

The first moments, covered and a stolen child.

1. I step outside to pick up the milk and check my pots of seeds. The air is so still and cool and the day so full of possibilities.

2. A flowering shrub in the middle of this front garden has an old curtain thrown over it to keep the cold off.

3. We find frogspawn in the nature reserve pond. She tells me that when she was at junior school, she stole a single jellied egg from the class's tank and took it home in her drink bottle. Her mother was very cross and said: 'Well you'd better look after it.' So she raised a little frog.

No coat, the black cat and meat.

Over at Daily Mammal they are discussing My Family and Other Animals.

1. I leave the house without a coat.

2. A black cat shape has been cut out of the car park.

3. He's looking covetously at my pink lamb cutlets, but he's not having any.

Pass it on, not yet dark and getting better.

1. This houseplant (which was a present) has tiny roots on a runner. I think I'll pot it up, put it in an interesting container, and give it to someone else.

2. As I am leaving work, there is still some light in the sky.

3. This evening, Nick looks less poorly than he did this morning.

Ladder, more light and shining path.

1. I like to see the window cleaner move his ladder with his rucksack clipped on to the fourth rung. He leans it carefully against the wall and climbs up to put soap on a shop's glass, before swiping it off again. The other morning, he passed a frightening man who was muttering angrily to himself in a bus stop and said: 'Hallo Mike.'

2. Changing a lightbulb with too few watts to a brighter one.

3. On a rainy night the path up the hill shines when everything else is dark and dirty.