Tag: 365daysofbiking

July 17th – On my return, I was held up by some rather familiar beaked* villains. This is Coulter Lane, Burntwood, just outside the farm where they sell asparagus. It’s a good couple of miles from Chasewater – yet these honking, hissing impediments to cycling progress are clearly the Chasewater geese – domestic birds set free some years ago, that generally hang around the boating lake, grumping at anyone and anything. 

Are they regulars here? Is this actually their home? Do they commute?

So many questions, so little time…

*yes, I know they have bills, not beaks, but it doesn’t scan as well.

July 17th – I slipped out of work early to get some time back, and with a wonderfully hot, languid afternoon in progress I rode straight up onto the Chase, and barely stopped except for a well-deserved ice cream at Birches Valley. Dropping down into Rugeley, I enjoyed the long, cool downhill, then hopped onto the canal – a peace green sanctuary where the weeping willows looked stunning.

A perfect afternoon.

July 16th – Working late, stopped off for a Chinese takeaway on the way home.

Just what do bored staff do in such places when it’s slack, then? 

Origami, obviously. 

A variety of animals and flowers, mostly folded from the local newspapers. I loved it. There’s creativity in the oddest places if you look out for it. There’s clearly a talent here.

July 16th – Hey, South Wigston has a station cat. With the close proximity of dense housing, and embankments and wastelands full of small, squeaky things, it was inevitable, really, but I’d never seen this young lad before.

He was doing monorail cat on the pedestrian barrier until I appeared. He hopped off when I got out my camera, but did pose for a few shots… a lovely lad, clearly.

Like pubs, every station should have a resident cat.

July 15th – Also a pain is the himalayan balsam. This tall, beautiful plant is growing in abundance now, and flowering strongly on damp waste ground, stream banks and the hinterlands and margins. It’s beautiful pink/white, metallic-scented flowers hide the real problem: this is an invasive species introduced by the Victorians.

The plant grows so tall and thickly that it chokes all beneath it, yet once established, like japanese knotweed, it’s very hard to remove.

The A461 Pipe Hill at Lichfield, and most of the verges to the waterworks at Pipe Hill are full of the stuff, season by season edging it’s way to Muckley Corner.

A beautiful undesirable.

July 15th – This journal illustrates many things, but mostly, it illustrates my ignorance. 

Three weeks hence I stopped to admire this horse chestnut tree in Festival Gardens, Lichfield, and noted how fine it was looking, laden with young fruit, and that it was showing hardly any leaf miner activity.

It is now. The leaves have been absolutely infested with it.

The leaf miner is a pain – it can cause early leaf fall and there’s speculation that this tiny moth larvae can cause poor fruit development, but otherwise, this infestation doesn’t affect the overall health of the tree. It just makes the poor thing look terribly diseased.

Next time, I’ll keep my mouth shut. Can’t help feeling I cursed my poor arboreal brother…

July 14th – On my return, I needed to call on a pal in Newtown, so I headed up the canal past Ogley Junction. Whilst passing, I noticed a delivery of sectional piling and plant, and wondered if the Canal & River Trust had got it together to stabilise the slipping local embankments. 

I guess time will tell…

July 14th – South Wigston station, where sadly some Philistine has been out with a brush-cutter and mown the interesting flowers back from the walkway.

However, the sweet peas growing in the centre of my favourite patch of wilding are keeping the bees busy. 

There’s always something to cheer, here…

July 13th – TheMadOldBaggage is right: I’m being unduly pessimistic about autumn and the passage of summer. It’s still gorgeous, and there’s loads of stuff still to come into flower.

Today, I was delighted to spot these gorgeous wild sweat peas. Just how lovely are they? You can’t fail to see these and not be lifted.

Autumn? Not yet you don’t, matey. 

July 13th – A vitally important mission begins.

These are the seed heads of my favourite flowers, cowslips, and the wee dots the seeds themselves. For the next few weeks, I’ll potter around anywhere I saw cowslips in spring, looking for the seeding plant. I’ll gently collect a little pot of seeds, and then spread them on land where it would be nice to see some in spring (praying I don’t get pulled by the coppers in the meantime).

It’s how most of the cowslips got on Clayhanger Common in the first place. I’m rather proud of that.

Guerilla planting is a random act of natural kindness. Do it now.