August 23rd – Spinning out through the countryside, I noticed how many plants and trees are fruiting – rowan, oak and many I don’t recognise. The willow herb is seeding, too, and it’s easy to see why it has the colloquial name ‘old man’s beard’. It’s very hard to escape the fact that autumn is now on my heels. A sobering thought.
August 10th – The harvest was underway everywhere I looked – out at Hammerwich, Stonnall, The slopes of Longon and the plains of Staffordshire. Everywhere I looked, there were plumes of grain dust rising in the distant fields like palls of smoke. At Home Farm, Sandhills, baling of the straw was ongoing. The parsnips in the field behind still look lush, and the oilseed rape is still not ripe, but the wheat, plump and healthy, is now stubble. And so the cycle continues.
August 5th – It seems the harvest had started just before the rains came over the weekend. These fields near Stonnall were still full of wheat on Thursday, and are now no more than neat rows of cut straw, with crows looking for food in the gleanings. I noticed other fields had been cut at Springhill and Summerhill too.
And so the season ticks on. It doesn’t seem long since there were deep snowdrifts here..
July 16th – Another steady click in the escapement of summer, the willow herb is in flower. This tall plant with soft purple flowers is the king of the margins, the scrub and wastelands. It grows in any neglected spot, requires little from the ground, and spreads via familiar late-summer wind borne seeds often called ‘fairies’ by kids. The seeds are fluffily and white, and give rise to the colloquial name ‘Old man’s beard’.
This part of summer is all about the transition from the yellows of spring to the blues, pinks and purples of high and late summer; nightshade, foxglove, lupins, buddleia, vetch, Himalayan balsam.
Right now, every day is a delight of new flowering.
April 30th – Spring really is here. I’ve waited a very long time for it, but today, I noticed the trees at Blake Street coming into leaf.
There is nothing I can really add. Is there really anything more beautiful, hopeful and optimistic than this?
September 21st – Late afternoon, the heavens opened. It’s been a fairly dry month, so it wasn’t too bad. But it affected my mood: it’s now the autumnal equinox when day is the same length as night, and the earth neither tilts toward, or away from, the sun. We are now crossing into astronomical autumn and winter, and the driving rain and wet countryside reminded me of this. I feel like this every year, before the leaves turn and the countryside becomes once more golden. It never gets easier, if I’m honest. It’s hard being an outdoors person when the nights draw in.
September 12th – By the time I was coming back towards Brownhills, the sun was coming out again and blue skies were peeping through. I noticed today the almost total absence of wildflowers on the canal – the flowering season is well and truly over. The leaves are still verdant and lush, but the joy of the wildflowers has ceased, at least for another year. I feel autumn tugging at my coat. This is not good; I’m in that depressing period when I know what’s coming but haven’t adjusted to appreciating it yet. Autumn colour always lifts my spirits, so bring it on…
August 27th – I bloody hate summer bank holiday. To me, perhaps wrongly, it represents the end of summer. Last break until Christmas, from now, the nights draw in in earnest, the weather closes in and the warm days and sunshine once again become hazy memories. Except this year, we didn’t have much summer, either, and I felt doubly cheated.
I had to skip over to Burntwood at teatime. Driving rain, and a biting headwind. Some times, people ask me why I do this: today, deprived of summer and battling the elements, I was asking the question of myself…
July 10th – This is a terrible photo, but illustrates something that always comes as a shock. The first vanguard of the fruiting season are the formation of haws on the hawthorn hedges and thickets. These hard, bitter berries will take the rest of the summer to ripen, before being eaten by the birds over winter. The sight of these fruits swelling and turning crimson is a harbinger of autumn to me, and a sign of the seasons’s passage. Together with the rain, this did not make for a terribly uplifting ride home…
September 10th – It wasn’t going to last. What was a sunny, mellow afternoon became harsh, squally and very, very wet. Taking shelter under the eaves of Tesco in Brownhills, I reflected on the other side of our area – the urbanisation, the decay, the hardstanding and traffic. As I cycled home in the wet, traffic impatient and irritable, I couldn’t help but curse the insanely variable weather. This year is arse-about-face; this is April. In September.
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