August 5th – Looping back, still with a heavy heart, I stopped on the Pier Street bridge and noticed that more exploratory groundworks had been taking place on the old market site off Silver Street, clearly in preparation for new housing given permission there.
I’m all for that and hope work starts soon – anything that makes this area look less open and bleak is welcome to me.
That thought, at least, made me somewhat brighter.
July 31st – Well, I said a bit dull. What I actually meant was under a really, really threatening sky.
As it happened, the rain never came, and the sky cleared again.
The weather may be challenging at the moment but at least it’s not boring…
July 24th – It seems the Walsall stenciller is at it again.
Since street artist made such an art of stencil painting, we’ve had a few copycats spring up locally, but today I noticed a new one on the over bridge to the disused canal arm in Pleck, Walsall.
A small, red person, as might be featured on a warning or keep Britain tidy sign. The image was fresh, there was still overspray on the gravel underneath.
I have no idea what this is about, but I shall be looking out for more… I think it’s rather cute.
July 23rd – I returned in steady rain, from the old cement works bridge down the canal to the heart of Brownhills. This part, near Pelsall Road with the old South Staffordshire Railway Railway bridge in the background – one of only two listed buildings in Brownhills – looks particularly beautiful, especially on a grey, rain sodden afternoon.
Beauty lies where you find it…
July 18th – On the canal near the Black Cock Bridge, there’s again a natural, organic scum that seems to be originating in the reed beds on the far bank. I can’t see what it is, but the film is definitely organic and natural.
There’s been a lot more of this phenomena this year than normally – I wonder if it’s a factor of the particularly warm summer we’ve been having?
July 3rd – It’s time for my annual heart-wrenching over the purple conundrum that is the butterfly bush. Buddleia is a prolific, very common shrub that will grow anywhere, in any scrap of earth or soot, and is synonymous with urban decay: look upwards in any town right now and you’ll see this tenacious battler growing and flowering from cracks in brickwork, lifting tiles on roofs, blocking gutters, prizing apart chimneys and crowding any embankment, towpath, disused rail line or wasteground.
It’s beautiful and very good not just for Lepidoptera, but all manner of bugs and is very, very pretty. But it is such a symbol of dereliction and decay.
June 22nd – Two poor pictures, but ones I just had to share, as they’re of birds I don’t see very often locally: Jays. There was a pair of these intelligent, resourceful corvids bickering over something and chasing each other from tree to tree. I assume one had interloped on the other’s patch, but whatever was happening, there was a lot of squawking, warning chiming and wing flapping.
These are beautiful, colourful birds and they were battling in the trees near the Pier Street Bridge by Clayhanger Common in Brownhills.
A rare delight and I’m sad I didn’t get better pictures.
June 14th – I notice that on the embankment on the north side of the Black Cock Bridge in Walsall Wood, the vipers bugloss is flowering again. In 2014, this was very prolific, in full bloom for about 20-30 metres, but now is sadly confined to just the one clump.
A beautiful flower though, and one I’ve not seen anywhere else locally.
June 7th – After seeing the rhizomes floating in the canal earlier in the season, it’s gratifying to note that the development of this season’s water lilies has been sift – and a matter of a couple of week the characteristic large, leathery leaves have formed, and now the first tentative flowers were out as I rode to work along the canal at Bentley Bridge.
Two listing species are common on local canals – yellow and white, and both are gorgeous. A lovely sight.
May 31st – Also a lovely sight and a regular here, honeysuckle or woodbine, and my favourite display grows up the embankment on the northwestern flank of the Black Cock Bridge; tumbling and cascading over the railings a fences, a huge bush flowers here every year and always looks and smells divine.
For a flower so entrenched in British culture, it’s got that alien look of tropical blooms, like the Passion flower: our wildflowers aren’t normally this brassy!
It would be very hard not to love honeysuckle.
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 