July 12th – Passing through Kings Hill Park on a much better day I stopped to take the place in for five minutes. This small, well maintained patch of calm in an otherwise harsh urban environment cannot be underestimated.
There are many species of trees and they all look wonderful at the moment. The flowers, usually profuse are between phases at the moment, yet that doesn’t seem to matter.
I love this place.
July 6th – This is terrific. Coming from Walsall down the Wednesbury Road and through Places, I happened to notice the tenement house over the road, with the absolute riot of flowers in borders, tubs and baskets.
All this in a part of Walsall often considered to be less than beautiful.
My compliments and thanks to the householder, a beautiful and wonderful thing – all crammed in to a very small space.
This really brightened my morning.
July 6th – Passing through Walsall and making a few calls on a periodically sunny morning, I was intrigued by the laser cur plate in the railings and the shadow it cast.
That’s a lot of effort to go to for a plain, mostly overlooked bit of street furniture, and I only spotted it by the shadow cast.
I wish the photo had come out as well as it looked at the time!
July 3rd – It’s time for my annual heart-wrenching over the purple conundrum that is the butterfly bush. Buddleia is a prolific, very common shrub that will grow anywhere, in any scrap of earth or soot, and is synonymous with urban decay: look upwards in any town right now and you’ll see this tenacious battler growing and flowering from cracks in brickwork, lifting tiles on roofs, blocking gutters, prizing apart chimneys and crowding any embankment, towpath, disused rail line or wasteground.
It’s beautiful and very good not just for Lepidoptera, but all manner of bugs and is very, very pretty. But it is such a symbol of dereliction and decay.
June 30th – Spotted near Wednesbury, this lovely black cat that I’m sure a passing witch must have left behind. Prowling the perimeter of it’s territory, it peered at me cautiously before settling down to stare me out through the railings.
A lovely puss that clearly takes security duties very seriously indeed!
June 23rd – I had to nip to the Holford industrial estate in North Birmingham on the way home from work – I was going to go to Walsall and hop on a train, but it was quicker just to head straight there. Making my way to the station on my return, I spotted this curious sight on the corner of Brookvale Road and Deykin Avenue in Witton.
I can’t make much sense of this – why remove a key part of a building like that? I was particularly taken with the fireplace and chimney still clinging on for dear life.
I sense there’s a story here. If anyone knows, I’d love to hear it.
June 22nd – More cats, sorry, but I just loved these pair, again in the cat metropolis of Scarborough Road, Pleck. There had been light drizzle, and the air was cooling but this pair of lazybones were in the same garden, asleep and totally oblivious.
I particularly like how the black one has fallen asleep while having a wash.
Oh, for the life of a cat…
June 20th – This old chap is someone I’m very pleased to see, for the first time this year.
This elderly, gummy old cat lives in Kings Hill, Darlaston, and is clearly a well loved companion to someone in the old folk’s flats there. I’ve been saying hello to him in passing for years now, and he’s a good natured but aloof fellow who’s proud and busy despite his clearly senior status.
His whiskers are always immaculate, and his lack of teeth doesn’t seem to impede his hunting instinct. But the reason I’m pleased to see this gentleman is that I always think about old cats, lying in the sun, enjoying the day. Never is a cat happier than summer, and I’m pleased this one survived long enough to feel another day of healing sun on his back, ease his aches and maybe stir the memories of kittenhood and a life well lived.
So pleased you’re still around old lad.
June 20th – A day of errands in the Black Country and plenty of riding the canals, green and limpid as they always are in summer, and alive with life, from the Wednesbury mother and foal to the bugs in the cowparsley.
The pink flowers are stunning and I spotted them on the way home in Harden, just on the canal bank there. Does anyone know what they are? they’re absolutely gorgeous.
June 19th – I met this skinny, lithe young cat in north Walsall, flaked out on the footpath in the late afternoon heat. Grubby, like he’d been sleeping and rolling in the dust all day, clearly a gentleman of leisure.
The curious position he was in I initially feared he might be hurt, but he was fine, and obligingly rolled over for a tummy tickle and game of chew the finger.
A charming soul and a true flaneur of the summer streets.
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