April 24th – A short exercise ride, still working from home, mostly. Despite the strangeness in everyday human society, the natural world continues as normal.
Nice to see the moorhens pairing off to mate. Such humble, unassuming little birds.
I keep saying it, but it’s the normal, beautiful events of spring that are keeping me going day to day at the moment.
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April 20th – I see on the canal near Walsall Wood that the sallow trees are coming into blossom. These spiny female catkins will soon start spewing huge amounts of fluff.
Sallow or goat willow is a member of the wider willow family, and grows profusely hereabouts. After the initial pretty male catkins have passed – pussy willows – then come the female catkins that you can see here. Once these peculiar green flowers pollinate, they generate wind-borne seeds in a few weeks: these evolve in the form of a large cloud of fluff that for a few days will coat the canal, towpaths, woodland paths, verges and road margins.
Sallows are not the only willow to do this peculiar thing, but they are certainly the largest group to do it hereabouts.
Bizarre, but fun…
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April 18th – Also on the MacLean Way – more traditional beauty is to be found on the site of Brownhills Railway Station, just in central Brownhills, behind the Smithys Forge pub on the old track – primroses. Loads of them.
I don’t know how they got here but they are truly stunning.
Well worth look.
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April 18th – I took a ride down the McLean Way – the cycleway that runs down the old South Staffordshire railway line through Brownhills, being converted by Brian Stringer and pals from Back the track.
From what was a rubbish filled cutting, I must say the volunteers have done very well. It’s a credit to them and their hard graft.
What I’m liking also is the work of the graffiti writers who ply their trade at night under the A5 bridge. There is some seriously impressive artwork down there.
It’s great to see such affection for the NHS too.
Clearly a very talented artist.
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April 17th – Near Newtown, just near the A5 bridge on the canal, another wonderful sign of spring on a grey afternoon: The swans are nesting here.
This is the first nest I’ve seen in this spot and I think it’s probably the mystery couple from last year who suddenly seemed to appear with hatched chicks, which I think had been incubated in a nest out of sight behind a moored boat.
I noted one bird was supervising while the other did the work. I have no doubt that if the one watching could have folded its wings, it would have done…
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April 17th – A quick ride on a day that had been decent, but started to darken as I left the house in the afternoon, and actually came on to rain as I arrived home.
I nipped to the canal at Ogley Hay to check out the oilseed rape at Home Farm: Still not quite fully out but looking beautiful all the same.
But what really shocked me was my favourite tree: The handsome, beautiful horse chestnut on the skyline near the farmhouse. I tell the seasons by that tree and it’s rapidly come on to leaf.
A new bright green jacket smartly adorning an old friend.
Spring is definitely on her throne!
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April 16th – Life may be on hold at the moment, but Brownhills has been steadily changing and improving for a few years now, and I can’t see that process slowing up much, even with the current unpleasantness caused by coronavirus.
A few short years ago the view up the canal from Silver Street towards Catshill Junction would have been blighted by the empty market place and waste ground where Silver Court Gardens once stood, a set of five tenement blocks that really were quite grim.
But now the view of houses and trees in blossom over limpid, peaceful water is a world away from those bad days.
And I continue to watch my community evolve.
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April 15th – I’ve noticed over the last few days that one of the least noted wildflowers is so far having a very good year. Yellow, rather beautiful, and dreadfully overlooked, the dandelion is a staple of verges, lawns, hedgerows, edgelands and anywhere there’s a scrinite of nutrition to be extracted from soil.
A lovely tenacious plant, I love to see these fine flowers; yet I feel I’m probably one of the very few to ever appreciate them.
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April 14th – On the way to work on a sunny morning, I passed the new pond at Clayhanger on the canal. I noticed that the pear tree there is currently in blossom.
Pear blossom is subtly different to apple, which comes a bit later and has pink tinges, and to cherry, which is generally smaller, denser and more uniform.
The white flowers against the blue sky again made for a brilliant contrast, and improved my mood no end.
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April 11th – I wasn’t feeling great, so a short spin out over Castle Hill and back to Brownhills up the Chester Road.
In the last day, the Spanish bluebells had come out in the hedgerow near Fishpond wood, and as usual with this colony they ranged in shade from blue, to pink, to white.
A gorgeous spectacle on a day when I didn’t feel great.
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