June 7th – A mystery that always makes me wonder: Why are blue-purple lupins always out weeks earlier than the light colours like the pink ones here at Clayhanger Bridge?
I think I prefer the pink ones if I’m honest although they’re all beautiful.
This curiosity does at least extend the visible presence of a beautiful flower…
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June 4th – The orchid season is upon us, and two spotted miles apart: The tall purple one (about 12 inches high) is the one spotted in the patch by the canal in Walsall Wood last week: It’s developed beautifully.
The second is a random lone soldier spotted beside the cycleway at Telford station: In the lovely pink-purple colour you can really see the gorgeous patterns on the petals.
Both seem to be northern marsh orchids but I’m certainly no expert.
Beautiful flowers and some of my favourites – only here for a few short weeks so if you want to find some, get out now.
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May 22nd – One of the joys of late spring and well into summer are the various varieties and colours of wild roses that populate wastelands, hedgerows, thickets and any edgeland that’s relatively sun-blessed and open.
In Telford on the way to a client meeting, the cycleway from the station to Hortonwood is lined with splashes of pink – from pale, almost white to deep, deep almost purple. And without exception, they smell divine.
Unlike cultivated roses in parks and gardens, these wayside stars get little or no care and just do their own, dishevelled thing – and to me that’s far more beautiful than some preened and nurtured hybrid.
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May 7th – Further up the canal at Bentley Bridge near Darlaston Green, another sign of spring: The roses are flowering on the edge of the canal – rather poetically between scrapyards either side of the canal, between which the green vein of the canal ambles, being beautiful.
The roses smell gorgeous and are a true joy to the heart in such grey times.
I don’t know where the warmth and sun are hiding but we could do with them back. But in the meantime, this is a wonderful burst of brightness for sure.
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May 6th – It wasn’t a bad day, really, and thanks to some emergency help from a doctor, I had some good medication and felt much, much better.
So I did what I always do when improving: Get on my bike.
This season I want to expand my horizons a bit. I want to explore places I’ve not been in years. So I thought I’d make a start by heading west rather than north or east.
West is difficult from Brownhills. Beyond Great Wyrley is miles of lovely, rolling countryside, but sadly, Great Wyrley and Cannock are in the way. When the motorway and bypasses came through, it left few peaceful, viable paths to the countryside of the west, meaning getting to it is a chore.
But as I reminded myself today with a 52 mile bimble, it’s actually gorgeous when you make the effort. So I will. Far more often.
I went via Norton, Washbrook, then into Wyrley, Landywood and Shareshill. Up through Hilton Park, Saredon to Four Ashes, then on to the canal north to Penkridge, Acton Trussell and Milford, and from there down the main roads to Rugeley and back over Red Hill and Chorley.
A really fine ride, sadly in mostly grey, cold weather but the scenery – and lack of discomfort – more than made up for it.
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May 9th – Between the Black Cock and Clayhanger Bridges, not far from the new pond, an apple tree on the canal embankment is in bloom.
If smells absolutely beautiful and is a veritable riot of flowers.
I love how the dominant colour is pure white, but look closely and the buds and petal fringes are pink.
One of the most lovely sights of the season.
April 25th – One of the sadnesses of the season is how short lived the blossom is – it’s there, and gone in a blaze of colour, then shed petals and confetti, then… nothing. A more transient example of the season’s wheel you could not find.
At the moment, the blossom is just starting to end, but passing these two intertwined trees on the cycleway to Priorslee in Telford always fascinates me as it looks like one tree with two different colours of blossom.
I love how, even when fresh, the pink one looks like bright but tattered tissue paper.
Such a lovely, but all to quickly passing, time of year…
April 24th – Pink blossom, just after dawn on the day a town mourns a young life lost way too soon.
Sometimes, nothing more needs to be said.
Rest in peace, little one.
October 16th – An very strange weather day. We were expecting severe storms in the afternoon, and in the morning, to a gradually increasing wing, the sky and light turned pink. Not just a light, gentle pink, but a deep, strong pink that suffused everything and made one think the end was coming.
It actually turned out to be pollution and sand dust in the upper atmosphere caused by the oncoming, dying hurricane, but the effect was bfar better than any eclipse I’ve ever seen.
For an hour or so on an otherwise unremarkable October morning, the world went a little bit strange for us all.
September 19th n- One of the odder fruits of the autumn is the snowberry. Serving only as bird food, this ornamental shrub, like firethorn, is often used for ornamentation in public parks, edge lands, industrial estate landscaping and so on.
As far as I can tell, the birds seem to like the white berries that make a distinctive popping sound when stepped on or thrown hard at the floor, and the bees certainly like the pink and white flowers, still very much in evidence on the same shrubs as the large, healthy-looking fruit.
Snowberry will grow with little attention needed and does look pretty, especially when dappled by dew, as these examples in the centre of Darlaston attest.
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