Tag: summer

September 15th – I had to visit Tipton of a hot, humid and hazy afternoon. The traffic was intense and the atmosphere oppressive and thick, but glancing over the canal bridge near Owen Street, the canal looked beautiful in the soft sunshine, and near a disused arm bridge, two young lads were fishing in a scene that couldn’t have changed much for decades.

The Black Country has a knack of showing its beauty when you least expect.

September 8th – People keep grumbling about all the cats. Sorry, but I adore them.

The characters that appear in the warmer days of summer – loafing, watching, patrolling and generally taking the air include in their number the more elderly of the local feline population, and I find them quite charming.

Usually dozing, washing or lazing, these characters have done all their rushing around, and are generally too comfortable to run off when you stop to say hello.

There’s often a world of experience in their manner, features and battle scars.

I’m never too busy to stop and offer an ear-tickle.

September 1st – As I arrived home in darkness, I caught sight of a critical milestone on the bike computer: Sunset was now taking place before 8pm. From now until November, the darkest will positively gallop onwards, and summer, with it’s warm and light evenings will just be another memory of a season passed.

How I hate the encroaching darkness.

August 31st – The willow herb is going to seed now, I noticed the fluff as I rode the cycleway through the Goscote Valley. Filling the air at the slightest provocation from the breeze, the seeds this dweller of the margins produces float and dance on the wind.

When I was a kid, we called the little floating seeds ‘fairies’ and it was considered good luck to catch one. These days, I just tend to catch them in my mouth while riding.

My grandad called this ‘old man’s beard’ and you can see why.

This is a real end-of-summer occurrence and so a little bittersweet, but no summer would be complete without it, even if it does make me spit!

August 8th – I felt it again today,  that Autumn feeling. Just on the canal at Clayhanger the leaves aren’t even turning and the feathered water lilies are still perfection itself, but the honeysuckle going over, the acorns swelling on the trees and hard quality of the air made me think more of a clear day in October than August.

Is it me, or is anyone else feeling an early Autumn coming on? 

August 5th – Interesting to note the fruits doing well this year and those that aren’t. We seem to have bounteous quantities of blackberries, acorns and here, sycamore seeds. Beech also seems to be fairly prodigious.

Not doing so well at all are the horse chestnut, hazel and pear trees.

It’s curious how the years cycle. As my Grandad used to say ‘It’s always a good year for something’.

August 2nd – Another summer soldier that looks superb in rain is the dog rose. Still flowering well and looking gorgeous, like the willow herb they line the paths, tracks, verges and edgelands of town and country, and I think few people really notice them.

Which is sad, because as these in Darlaston  show – growing outside a disused factory – they really are beautiful.

So many unsung heroes amongst the wayside flowers.

July 28th – Inexorably sliding now from the flowering to the fruiting, I notice the first blackberries are making their appearance in the hedgerows, scrubs and thickets. 

It looks like another bumper crop this year, that’s certain to result in the baking of many a pie, crumble or tart.

A real treat for the foragers…

July 27th – A foul commute in steady rain and a headwind, with the greasy roads I’d experienced a couple of days ago. There was really nothing at all to commend cycling this morning.

And then I passed the ripening rowan berries, bright orange and glistening with raindrops, and the morning didn’t seem as grim anymore.

I love how nature does that.