Tag: Darlaston

December 13th – On the canal near Bentley bridge, the gorse (or is it broom? I’m never sure) is coming into flower and bringing a splash of welcome colour ro a drab, damp landscape.

I love to see this flower – it carries me through winter and reminds me it won’t be long until spring flowers return. It also won’t be long now until the shortest day and once more, the opening out will commence again.

I can’t wait.

December 9th – Near the canal at Moxley, Darlaston, I found these fascinating fungi – I’d stopped to undertake a quick mechanical adjustment, and had I not been crouched fiddling with the bike, I’d never have seen the rosy earthstars and what I assume from guides is some kind of pterula multifida living well in the under hedge leaf litter.

It just goes to show what wonders go unseen in our everyday environment.

December 7th – I had to go to Tipton late in the afternoon, and as I travelled through Moxley I spotted a familiar sight in the gathering dusk that was looking particularly splendid.

I know the urban landscape isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I do think it’s rather beautiful.

November 23rd -Noticed in light drizzle just by the far side of the canal, on the edgelands of a scrapyard near Bentley Bridge in Walsall: apples, so far out of human reach, they’re rotting off the tree – food only for birds, squirrels and foxes.

Dripping with winter rain, I guess they’ll stay until the next really heavy wind.

Sad to see. I wonder if they’re tasty at all?

November 16th – Not sure what this large fungus actually is, but it was handsome and glistening with collected dew and rainwater as I passed through Victoria Park in Darlaston in the early morning.

To my sadness, the fungi haven’t been terribly prolific this year – some did explode into life late, like the fly agaric, but this year I’ve hardly seen any puffballs, very few shaggy ink caps and the brackets seem well down too.

I do hope the unusually dry autumn hasn’t scuppered chances of seeing rosy earthstars at Clayhanger again… 

November 16th – Also providing colour, and much later than normally expected, the leaves are stunning still.

It’s that time of year when if it rains, many tracks, backlanes and other cycle routes become slippery with leaf pulp, which is treacherous and hard to predict.

The colours were beautiful, even against a threatening sky.

November 4th – The autumn colours were great this morning. When I started my ride to work, it was in semi darkness and drizzle; by the time I got there it was sunny, with clear blue skies.

Looking up in Darlaston’s Kings Hill Park through a canopy of yellow orange leaves, it felt good to be alive, to be there in the here and now.

It happened every year. I dread the onset of Autumn, and the wily old devil charms me to love in the end.

It was ever thus.

November 2nd – I was lucky to pass through Darlaston tonight as the sun set, and the view over the landscape – today, a genuinely black Black Country – was beautiful; once, this view would have been marked by chimneys, stacks and furnaces; this evening, house lights, clear air and the glow of sodium discharge made the urban sprawl look like glowing embers of a fire that caught the clouds alight.

Watching on, like a sentry, the cellphone tower; constant, contracted, monitoring, trading it’s hundreds of concurrent conversations with the ether.

And there I stood, camera in hand, caught for a moment in ideas of technological progress and the beauty of the place I love.

November 1st – Also in Kings Hill, a character I see a fair bit, this elderly black and white puss with no teeth. Gummy and grumpy, he’s actually a charming chap when you catch him in a good mood. Today, he was startled by workmen on the Chapel renovation and their grinder, so he wasn’t feeling accommodating, and yowled at me to stop it.

It’s totally unacceptable when your daytime activities are disturbed by workmen.