This morning my habit of putting things down and forgetting where I’ve left them drove me to distraction but also led me on an interesting journey of things lost and found.

Walking home from taking my son to school, I found some flowers that looked as if they were made out of soft tissue paper. They were so delicate, right down to the scalloped edges of their petals. Heavy with dew they looked like snowflakes against the dark grass. I picked up four or five - as carefully as I could with phone, tea and very unruly hair blowing in my face and proceeded home to photograph them. While attempting unsuccessfully to recreate the scene, I found three spiders I hadn’t seen before - one I particularly wanted to photograph as he had a face pattern on his chest and was smaller and less jumpy looking than the adult version perched very inconveniently above my basil. I tried arranging the flowers but nature’s windswept beauty was lost. As if on cue, Gordon came over to investigate and arranged himself artfully on the garden wall - a new focus was found.

Then my lense was lost - put somewhere ‘safe’ and after a long hunt was finally found. Now my phone was lost and another more frustrated hunt ensued. Finally, everything found I set out to photograph the spiders and the exquisite feather I’d been saving. I found a new spider, lost the main one I was looking for and in the process the feather but found unexpectedly, a beautiful leaf skeleton, like nature’s lace. Then I found a miniature snail, but more than that I found a childhood memory. A long forgotten memory of playing in the garden under the stairs and discovering that there were intricate yellow snails inside the tiny shells and then creating miniature worlds for them - fascinated by their minute scale and detail. It all came back so clearly.

I have a similar though far more unruly garden under my stairs so I photographed the snail there, crawling over an antique watch face - much to the annoyance of Desmond who was also found and considers this spot His room!

Later, on the walk home from school I found a similar spider to the one I had lost and was amazed to see how dragon-like he appeared in the photo. Below the web I found a tiny purple flower, smaller than my finger nail. Then I found another spider who on first glance appeared to be carrying a tiny piece of shiny aluminium, bower-bird like across the web. On much closer inspection, the shiny metal shard was very much a part of him and despite his constant movement, he was a delight to photograph.

Much later, I found one of the flowers from this morning’s failed shoot. Nature’s tissue found, floating on the pond.

I never did find that feather though!