July 20th – A day of maintenance, work interruptions and grim weather. I spun out mid afternoon into the wind for a run over to Burntwood on an errand.
As summer advances, the greens of the hedgerows and woodlands are darker and more weary, and the fields are now turning gold for harvest.
How quickly this year is passing. But the summer is still beautiful.
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July 19th – I was in Birmingham for the afternoon on a grey, wet afternoon. The riding wasn’t great but the city was as charming as ever.
On days like this you can really see the origins of the local saying ‘You’ve a face as long as Livery Street!’ – you’d never know it was cut in two by Great Charles Street Queensway and actually traversing the full street is quite a challenge.
I’m also amazed by the transition of the failed fountain ‘The floozy in the jacuzzi’ in Victoria Square into a beautiful flower bed. Civic fountains never seem to last long – Walsall’s and earlier Centenery Square water features are long dry, and this one continued to leak despite months of work to rectify it.
The lavender that grows there now, together with the other beautiful flowers are a credit to those that tend them and amazingly, the transition works beautifully.
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July 18th – A flower which I’m convinced has had me puzzling before is St. john’s Wort. This tidy, bushy shrub is planted ornamentally on a lot of industrial estates, and I never identify with it as being British – it seems exotic.
Also when people talk about wort I always think off plants like ragwort, or sticky wort.
Having caught the morning’s showers the whole bush glistened and shimmered. A coating of raindrops can only ever add to a plant’s appeal, after all…
Thanks to everyone on Facebook who helped me identify this one.
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July 18th – Yesterday, I found a plant that I considered may be wild carrot due to the presence of a tiny, dark flower in the centre of it’s otherwise creamy white umbrel. I wrote:
The reason I think this is wild carrot is the presence of a tiny dark flower in the centre of the head to attract insects – I’ll have another look tomorrow to verify this.
That is definitely a tiny, dark purple flower, so this plant is indeed wild carrot. Another baffling, wondrous feature you have to wonder the path towards.
This lovely wildflower was certainly keeping the overflies busy too.
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July 17th – Near Jockey Meadows on the way home, I stopped to take a call on the phone, and whilst mooching around on handsfree, I noticed this 10 spot ladybird in the adjacent hedge.
It appears to be native and not a an invasive harlequin, and yes, 10 spot ladybirds often have 12 spots apparently! There’s a similar yellowish harlequin but the pattern is markedly different and there’s no tell-tale dimple on the rear of the wing cases on this one.
I guess I must have done but I don’t recall seeing one this yellow before. A rather charming and endearing find – and the client who called me had no idea what I was doing.
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July 17th – Looking back over previous years, this prolific plant in various places has been puzzling me for ages – but I think I’ve sussed it: It’s possibly Queen Anne’s lace, or wild carrot.
This example was growing on the industrial estate where I work near Darlaston.
It looks a lot like the familiar cow parsley, but isn’t: The shape is all wrong.
The reason I think this is wild carrot is the presence of a tiny dark flower in the centre of the head to attract insects – I’ll have another look tomorrow to verify this. The plant itself is edible like normal carrots, but only when young. It has a variety of folkloric uses, including as a contraceptive, apparently.
I think I’m closer to solving this one.
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July 16th – Oh dear. Catshill Junction’s cosy spot by the narrows, previously occupied by the black and white sleepyhead was this evening occupied by a new tenant, a rather splendid tabby sporting a rather fetching collar.
A fair sized puss in good condition, someone loves that cat without doubt.
I wonder if they have a timeshare arrangement?
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July 16th – We tend to think of summer as the flowering season, but really that’s only half true. Flowering is mainly spring and early summer, and from high summer on, it’s the time for fruiting.
Starting with cherries and rowan berries, fruits, nuts, haws, hips and seeds are now developing well. The green hawthorn berries are plentiful this year after a thin year last time; and blackberries look like they’ll be in good supply too.
Although this time of plenty should really be celebrated, it always makes me just a bit wistful for a summer passing.
But of course, the fruit will bring colour of it’s own to brighten my hedgerows and waysides for weeks to come.
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July 15th – More galls: I mentioned knopper galls recently and pointed out these wasp galls deform acorn buds to form a home for the wasp larva within. I found an illustration of this in Victoria Park Darlaston.
This is a knapper gall starting to form. The acorn cap is normal, but where the smooth, rounded nascent acorn should be, there is a knobbly, textured growth which will expand to form the gall.
The DNA of the acorn has literally been corrupted or reformed to grow a home for the wasp egg within by a chemical the egg was coated with.
How does such a mechanism evolve? It’s truly wonderful.
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July 15th – The flowers continue to appear daily. Rosebay willowherb is the latest – a beautiful, tall weed, it paints wasteland, hedgerows, scrubs and derelict land with a beautiful hade of purple, complimenting the buddleia which it competes against for light and space.
In a few weeks it will seed with fluffy, wind-born seeds that float on the breeze and were locally known as ‘fairies’ when I was a kid, hence it’s colloquial name ‘Old man’s beard’.
We really should look more closely at the plants we dismiss as weeds.
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