The year is slowly winding down and, in terms of the calendar, we are now in winter. But one last short walk a few days ago almost took me back to fall, at least as far as the scenery was concerned.

Yes, it was cold and wet, but I still wanted to walk my favorite route once more this year. I had to be quite careful to avoid the many puddles around, but I had a really good feeling about it. I wanted to see everything one more time before it all turned really white.

And this time I noticed a few good friends again that I had already met on my last visits here. I'm talking about the seed pods of the American amber tree, which are now mostly lying on the ground, where they immediately catch your eye.

Since last year, I've gotten quite familiar with them and I'm happy every time I discover a few of them among the leaves. As already mentioned in another post, they are quite striking and distinctive and their spikes remind me a little of chestnuts.

At first they are still green, but as soon as they lie on the ground they start to change color. They then turn slightly reddish before becoming darker and darker at the end. This is when they open their pores and release the seeds inside.

Well, somehow these seed pods seem to exert a certain fascination on me. That's probably why I always pick up a few of them and take them home with me. There they decorate the entrance to the house along with a few other gifts that autumn has given us this year.

Today's pictures show a whole selection of these spiky balls, of which I like the green ones best, of course. But unfortunately they change color quite quickly, although the brown ones usually still look quite good on the ground. I even found a few seed capsules that weren't lying around individually, but as a whole cluster. And a few of them were even shimmering in a very special dark purple shade, which too is likely to change to brown soon.

A look up then showed that there were still a few spiky balls hanging on the trees, which have so far successfully resisted being shaken down by the autumn storm. But I'm quite sure that it will be completely bare on my next visit up here. Let's see when I can make it back to this park in the coming year. With a little fresh snow, it should look quite nice here too...