Wednesday February 24th 2021 – Also in Kings Hill Park, right against the former chapel wall the next day, the usually early miniature daffodils are out in force.
I don’t know why these come so soon but they’re always hot on the heels of the crocuses, and outlive them, carrying the spring colour on through the park.
I love the almost competitive appearance of spring flowers.
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Tuesday February 22nd 2021 – Nature is really cranking up her game this week. Back in my familiar haunt at Kings Hill Park, I was having a sunny morning break from work and taking time out to think when I discovered this lovely display of crocuses in Darlaston’s most little-known park.
Aren’t they gorgeous? Not just the beautiful lilac of the petals but the deep orange of the stamens, too.
A lovely find, and I’m glad the sun put in an appearance, too!
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Monday February 22nd 2021 – As if to answer my prayer for colour, my working from home exercise ride took me out at sunset, and I enjoyed it more than I expected, finding myself heading toward Chasewater on the canal.
On the bend near Newtown, looking toward the Chase Road bridge I saw the sky reflected in the canal, and although nearly dark, it was most gorgeous golden red.
Usually about now we go through a period of getting decent sunsets. It doesn’t last long, two or three weeks maybe – and there is a similar effect for a while when the nights close in in Autumn.
It’s one of the markers of entering and ending the winter darkness.
The period in spring always makes me glad – I hope it’s started.
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Sunday February 21st 2021 – For some reason we aren’t getting many bright, cold days this winter – but we are getting lots of dull, middling, anonymous, colourless days. Which is a shame, but at least it’s not continually wet like many recent winters have been.
There’s always a reason to be positive, after all…
On a test ride around Stonnall after some bike fettling, I stopped on Cartersfield Lane to make some adjustments and noticed there was a little brightness to the end of the day, albeit colourless: The sun was just retreating behind the woodland and electricity line up towards the quarry further up the hill.
On days like these, you take the beauty where you find it.
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Saturday February 20th 2021 – Just north east of Chasewater dam, behind the houses that were once the homes of mine managers, there’s an early spring spectacle every year that’s a must see for the initiated – the annual snowdrop glade.
Sadly, in all the vears I’ve visited it, I’ve never caught it on a sunny day.
But even on a dull Saturday, these carpets of what must be tens of thousands of tiny white wildflowers are stunningly beautiful, on land that was formerly industrial.
And visible from here, people pass by on the dam and nearby footpaths without realising the beauty they’re missing not 50 years away.
It’s just a secret for those who know…
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Friday February 19th 2021 – Back at work, I stopped on the way to check out the planters at Kings Hill park, which usually have loads of brightly coloured primroses.
Sadly, so far there are only these in bloom at the moment, but others are ready to open, which will be worth seeing.
Still, who can’t fail to be cheered up by a hot pink primrose on a grey February Friday?
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Thursday February 18th 2021 – Haring around Chasewater dam on a working from home exercise ride – for once in the daylight – I nearly came a cropper.
I was a shade off catching my pedal on this protruding piece of steel pipe.
It has a close fitting cap and is padlocked shut.
This erstwhile cyclist and walker boobytrap is not some idle lump of former mining equipment stuck in the ground, or a piece of scrap the local tatters have missed – but a monitoring well for the land around.
Ground engineers monitor the area around Chasewater Dam for groundwater pollution and signs that the dam may be leaking. To do that they have a number of these bores, drilled and sleeved, which are dipped and monitored regularly for changes in water level and the chemical composition of the water within.
These are a familiar sight around Chasewater, but also many of the public open spaces in the area that require ground monitoring – like Brownhills Common, Shire Oak Nature Reserve and Clayhanger Common.
So mind your step and watch out when cycling off road: They are quite sturdy and not very forgiving…
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Wednesday February 17th 2021 – On the canal at Walsall Wood, a familiar pair of beaky chancers come towards me hoping for food.
They make out they haven’t eaten for weeks, that they’re starving to death, and also they’ll feed my body to the pike if I don’t cough up a treat.
But unluckily for them, I’m empty handed, my usual small bag of corn left in the garage after filling; fortunately they seem in a rudeness of health that matches their people skills, and despite their menace, only hiss at me and scud off, to browse the canal bottom for tasty green goo.
Waterfowl can’t half turn on the sob story…
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Tuesday February 16th 2021 – Time for a favourite tree update.
The tree I love most of all is this particular horse chestnut, visible clearly on the skyline at Home Farm, Sandhills from the Wyrley and Essington Canal at Catshill, not more than 100 yards from Anchor Bridge.
I love it’s shape, the way it punctuates the rural landscape here, right on the very interface of the urban West Midlands with rural South Staffordshire.
It’s also my gauge of the seasons. I follow it’s colours as it weathers the the year: At the moment it is resolutely bare, but it will be in bud, and soon, from my distant towpath vantage point, I will see the familiar sheen of bright green emerge, before it comes into full leaf.
Usually it lags behind the fields and hedgerows, always the more eager neighbours, and so it is this year, with the field between us bright green with fresh crop growth.
I live for this view, this skyline. And that tree.
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Monday February 15th 2021 – One of my most beloved spring flowers, one that was also one of my mum’s favourites too, is the humble aconite.
These small, yellow, woodland flowers are not terribly common, but there, if you look really hard. They don’t last long, a couple of weeks in flower, tops, with only a few days at their peak, but they’re well worth catching.
These, just past their best, were spotted growing under trees on the Hortonwood cycleway in Telford, in a spot one would normally pass without noticing.
I’ve passed by that spot many times – and all that while they’ve probably been trying to get my attention. Poor things…
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