Tag: Tree

#365daysofbiking The Christmas list

December 12th – The Christmas tree in Walsall is usually very nicely done. After a few grim yers in the early 2000s when lighting contractors synthesised something akin to a tree from a lighting column to universal derision, then a year or two without, we now get a pretty decent tree in the square between the bus station, bank and the Crossing at St. Pauls.

This year’s tree is excellent – but following blustery weather, developed an unfortunate tilt. It’s now fixed, but still not quite plum.

I think it adds character.

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#365daysofbiking A tale of two trees

December 10th – Christmas trees in Walsall Borough have to be externally funded and the council won’t pay for them. In the district centres where they are present, someone has either usually been generous individually (like the three councillors who personally pay for Walsall Wood’s tree) or the public have come together to pay for them.

Setting an early example in the public subscription stakes has always been Rushall, whose community work hard every year to raise the money required to pay for a tree to be erected on the square outside the ‘Village Hub’ – the old library – and jolly festive it looks too.

Contrast that with the pitiful string of lights thrown on a random tree every year on the public open space in Shelfield, on the corner of Four Crosses Road and Lichfield Road.

I really don’t know why they bother there, I really don’t.

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#365daysofbiking Conical

November 30th – Chasetown has Christmas lights for the first time in a long while too, which is nice to see. Oddly though, their two Christmas trees (which appear identical, which must be a clue to their origin) are artificial, conical arrangements covered in some kind of canvas.

There’s one at usual near the former police station, and one outside the new offices of Chasetown Civil Engineering.

They’re interesting things, not entirely sure I like them but they are very striking.

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#365daysofbiking Fruition

November 29th – Popping up the hHigh Street at teatime, I noticed the first community funded Christmas tree for Brownhills was now up and lit for the season.

This is a real proof of the power of community – volunteers raised the money and paid for the tree to be erected entirely on their own volition and it’s a beautiful testament to the power of community.

Our first Christmas tree in a decade, I think… well done to all involved: Take a bow!

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#365daysofbiking Stumped

October 19th – Nipping over to Walsall Wood on an errand, I crossed the sadly fading old Oak Park – not the leisure centre of the same name, but the formerly ornamental park that gave the centres their name.

Near a bench by the old waterlogged bowling green, an amazingly vivid colony of what I think is honey fungus.

There was a fair collection of disparate fungus here, to be fair. About the only thing that seems to be doing well in this sad, lost park.

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#365daysofbiking Heliophile

September 28th – Out in the afternoon for an errand in Lichfield, and I noticed that the deer had trampled a gap in the hedge near Home Farm from the canal towpath at Catshill, again returning a good view of my favourite tree – the magnificent horse chestnut near the farmhouse.

Surprisingly, it has yet to become very autumnal.

However, a lone oddity in the foreground caught my attention: A solitary, large sunflower going at the field margin.

A truly wild specimen, it can only have got there via the mechanism of bird digestion.

What a fine serendipitous thing!

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#365daysofbiking Berry well red

September 4th – Also in the bright berry department, this bright red example grows in similar urban situations as the firethorn, but has much more spread, larger berries in smaller clumps more evenly spaced.

I was surprised to find that it’s actually a type of cotoneaster – plant that I’m used to having tiny leaves and berries.

It’s certainly very beautiful and the birds are already clearly digging in…

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#365daysofbiking Hot pink

September 1st – Autumn is on my heels now, and slipping out after a day’s bike maintenance for a test ride, I found myself in the most beautiful pink-suffused twilight.

Heading up the canal that snakes its way between Catshill and Sandhills, I admired my favourite tree at Home Farm – now showing hints of getting on it’s autumn jacket – and the plains of stubble to Stonnall, the harvest now in.

It was peaceful, warm and pleasant, with just a hint of cold air. We are in the odd interregnum between seasons, that saddest crossover between a summer passed and an Autumn to come.

But with a crescent moon and tranquility like this to enjoy, it’s not so melancholy.

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#365daysofbiking Bees do it

 

May 31st – Spotted purely by chance negotiating the new gate off the canal at Chase Road, Brownhills, a pair of bees apparently mating.

I did wonder at their size and apparerntly different species but no, they are most likely tree bumblebees making more tree bumblebees, bless them.

I left them in peace, the bees need all the chance to multipoly they can get.

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#365daysofbiking Respect your elders

May 30th – Also blossoming now is the delightful and humble elder, a shrub beloved of winemakers for hundreds of years. It grows in woods, hedgerows, on wasteland and anywhere it can. Here in Harlaston it’s thriving at the back of Victoria Park.

The tiny, beautiful white flowers have a gorgeous scent and can be used to make wine or champagne: the berries they make way for – deep red, almost black – make a heavy, heady wine that’s almost legendary.

This gives the winemaker a tasty dilemma: White and floral or red and strong?

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