August 9th – Now we’re moving on to late summer, the colour du jour is moving from the purples of willow herb, thistle and buddleia to the oranges and crimsons of hips, haws and berries.
Sparkling with raindrops in the morning sun, this year’s fruitfulness was glorious.
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August 15th – Also ripening in the hedgerows and waysides are a large variety of different rose hips in a range of shades and shapes. From cherry red and almost spherical to more oval and orange.
Again, these fruits will help sustain birds and other small animals into the winter and will be bright and beautiful in the late summer when traditionally the colour from flowers subsides.
August 3rd – I’m amazed at the general variety between types of rosehips. I mentioned these sweet fruit of the rosebush on here a few days ago, and noticed today they were developing at a fair pace now. They range from thin, almost yellow and small, to bright red, akin to a radish, like the one above, which is actually quite large.
It’s interesting as there seems less variety in wild rose flowers than there seems to be in the seed fruit.
At this time in late summer they make for a welcome splash of colour, and will continue to be so until late autumn. A beautiful but slightly sad reminder that the season’s wheel continues to roll forward whether we like it or not.
July 24th – Noticed in Holland Park, the reships are growing orange and becoming more rotund; yet thankfully, the blooms show no sign of slowing up.
With a coating of fresh raindrops, they look superb. Beauty is there, even in the rain of a grey Friday afternoon…
September 12th – The weather has taken an autumnal turn of late, although this morning it felt unseasonably warm. I took loads of pictures this morning of fungi, then discovered afterwards I’d had the camera set badly and they were all fuzzy and out of focus. On the way home, though, I noted the last flowers of the season still holding up well, and the surprise lupins at Clayhanger were a shock. The dog roses near Pier Street bridge have both wonderfully scented pink flowers and beautifully orange hips. There are still traces of summer in the wet hedgerows and scrubs.
This is an odd season, to be sure.
October 1st – October? How did that happen so quick? After the grimness of the day before, the bright morning was a joy. For the first time in a while I was in Telford, and the rose hips on the cycleway beside the M54 are beautiful. Rosehips can be used for so much stuff – wine, jelly, syrup – but few seem to pick them. Sad, because it’s been a great year for the roses.
There are a whole host of fruits here, from blackberries to dewberries, crab apples, medlars, rowan berries, catoniasters and even nightshade seem to be showing well. Autumn is also coming on here fast, more of which later in the week.
September 3rd – Beauty is often found in unexpected places, and unexpected circumstances. Like a bad penny today, I pitched up again in South Wigston. This station – no more than a suburban halt, really – has always been a station I’d hated. No information system, little shelter, grim and fore bidding in the dark. And very, very cold in winter. Yet, this year, something strange happened. I discovered beauty here. I started to study the patch of scrub between the ramp and platform on the northbound side way back in spring, when it started to show a remarkable diversity of flowers. Untended, it seems to have been subject to some form of guerrilla planting. As the seasons have advanced, I’d spotted more stuff going on in this patch of scrub, which I feel sure I’m the only person ever to have noticed. It’s enchanting.
Today I found myself studying it again, at 8:45 on a misty, yet hazily sunny autumn morning. The fruiting has started in earnest. Haws, Hips, and catoniaster (the blackbirds go nuts for those bright orange berries) mingled with teasels, snails and cobwebs to make an autumnal tableaux that astounded and transfixed me.
Sometimes, I think I must be the only person in the world who gets excited about this stuff.
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