When I was younger we used to get these kits to grow a magic crystal. It was probably the start of me conflating chemistry and witchcraft and perhaps the reason I performed so poorly in science at school. I just couldn’t comprehend how the particles in that saturated solution knew how to cling to the string and one another.

Its so interesting to me now looking back that it’s what the kids in the saturated social solution of high school do. Cling to one another, creating a uniform while rejecting a uniform, developing sharp, shard like exteriors while holding on for dear life to something that seems solid rather than the swirling liquid in a smooth sided beaker.

With my own school days far behind me I look at these crystalline structures during frosty dog walks. My sunrise photos of frost encrusted plants, the brambles all bereft of fruit but with sugar coated leaves guarded by long, arching, triffid-like briars.

The war is over, you have no fruit to protect now. Stripped bare by the birds, the jam makers and two border terriers with a taste for berries.

The photos I take are sometimes just for me, capturing the moment to reflect back on at a later date. Sometimes I share them online if the colours or textures are interesting. I adore detail and the lacy white adornments on leaves and spider webs are sometimes too beautiful to keep to myself.

I am the string then that draws the crystals to the central point, gathering them together and displaying them behind glass for those swimming in the saturated solution of indoor life to adhere to. Or not if they so choose. But I will go on gathering crystals and bringing them together for no other reasons than joy and delight that sharing something natural and beautiful brings to me and those who cling like shards to tiny moments of beauty, so easily forgotten and impossible to preserve.