April 17th – Every day, new flowers and leaves. This is fantastic, and just what I’ve been waiting for. All I need now is the sun to do it’s thing…
Spotted in a roadside verge near Lower Stonnall on Gravelly Lane – one of my all time favourite spring flowers – muscari or grape hyacinth. A garden favourite, I’m not sure if they’re native here or a garden escapee. But they are so very gorgeous, tiny blue arrangements of even tinier obovoid flowers.
Welcome back.
November 25th – On a bright, cold winter day, near the M6 Toll in Great Wyrley, clematis seed heads looking very alien in a forgotten, edge-land thicket.
These fascinate me, as no two have quite the same texture or appearance. I bet these were an absolute riot when they were in flower. I must come here next summer and see.
November 10th – A long day, but passing Jockey Meadows in the morning showed me how lovely even the edgelands of the area can be; wedged in between Walsall Wood and Shelfield, the site of scientific special interest that is the Meadows can be scrubby and untidy, and not quite one thing nor the other, but today it was gorgeous in the colours of autumn, with leaves falling gently in Green Lane and long winter shadows.
Just what you need to set you up for a day at work…
October 2nd – And then, still chasing my delivery notes, another wonder I’ve not spotted before: an apple tree growing beautiful, edible looking apples just out of reach on scrub between two factory yards.
Birds are loving the fruit, which are ripe now and falling to the ground untouched. They looked beautiful against the blue sky with the turning leaves like that.
Wonder if they’re as tasty as they look? They’re quite large.
October 2nd – This has really, really surprised me. Mooching about the industrial estate where I work in Darlaston, I was looking for some paperwork that had blown up the road, and retrieving it from a hedge, spotted these beauties thriving beneath.
I see earth star fungus on Clayhanger Common in December, but wasn’t aware they grew this early. Looking like they’re clay or plastic, they are the most extraordinary fungi I’ve ever seen, and finding them is a real treat – there is a whole colony there, growing undisturbed in a roadside bed hardly anyone would ever notice.
Amusingly, Tumblr (the blog platform this journal runs on) has a system that automatically scans images posted, and detected these photos as being indecent. Sent for re-review, they were obviously passed as a false alert.
It just goes to show, some shapes recur throughout nature…
June 9th – It’s the season of poppies, and there are some beautiful examples in the hedgerows, edge lands and waysides locally. I prefer these little clubs in forgotten, neglected spaces. Ragged, at various stages of maturing and going over, these to me are real poppies; dramatic, beautiful, natural, and naturally flawed.
I even love the alien-looking buds, almost prehistoric in their furry splendour.
I spotted these in the sandy embankment just by Shire Oak Quarry on my return to Brownhills.
A true hero of the hedgerow, and a worthy and apposite symbol of Remembrance.
May 17th – Nice to see, even on a rainy, grey morning, that meadow flowers are now showing strongly on the verges and edge lands of industrial estate, urban roads, tracks, towpaths and trails.
Welcome back for another season to buttercups, clover and bird’s foot trefoil, which serve to brighten even the most overlooked piece of grass.
Everywhere you look at the moment, beauty is bursting to the fore in a myriad of different flowers, leaves and blossoms.
A wonderful time of year.
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