Tag: wednesbury

April 30th – Another sign of spring in the air is the re-emergence of the urban and urbane cat population. Indolent and mainly indoors during the cold months, characters you haven’t seen for months miraculously reappear in spring, owning their neighbourhoods like they were never gone at all.

I was particularly pleased to meet this venerable old gentleman in Kings Hill, taking the air. I now know his name is Sam and he’s the companion of an elderly lady who lives nearby. Sam himself is getting on, has no teeth and is generally a stern but authoritative figure, even when asleep on the grass around the flats where he lives.

I usually spot him inactive and dozing in summer, usually in some well-chosen, sun-dappled spot where he can curl up and dream of his kittenhood, and feel the warmth ease his old bones. Very rarely do I see him as I did today, up, about and alert.

Yet again, a lovely old lad enjoys one more spring. Welcome back, Sam.

April 19th – I note there’s a good display this year of a curious little flower, that of Danish scurvy grass. A tiny white bloom, this plant loves salty soil and has colonised main road and lane verges in what’s known as the ‘burn zone’ – the area generally devoid of life where road salt spray and backwash makes life inhospitable for other plants.

In this salty environment, Danish scurvy grass thrives and blooms, giving lovely withe fringes to the kerbside.

A remarkable thing.

April 18th – There are lots of floral arrivals at the moment but it would be wrong to concentrate on the dramatic, showy ones. One return in the last week or so and enjoying the morning sunshine today from every patch of grass and roadside were a huge number of one of nature’s most overlooked gems – dandelions. 

These humble yellow flowers are actually really lovely if you stop and look at them for a bit – which today, I advise anyone to do. They’re really gorgeous.

Sometimes, it’s the little, familiar things that are most beautiful.

April 18th – Last week I found the lovely pieris flowers I didn’t recognise in Wednesbury, even though as readers Susan Marie Ward, Linda Mason and others pointed out, I’d posted them here before.

The reason I hadn’t recognised them was because I’m used to seeing them with the beautiful bright red foliage they normally develop in early spring, but this year seems very late, and last week there was no hint of it.

Well, now it’s arrived and the result is truly stunning. Pieris – sometimes called fetterbush, rather delightfully – is grown a lot in gardens and in beds on industrial estates and parks.

Little things like this make spring such a wonderful time, I’m so glad it’s finally here.

April 13th – I rode to work in steady rain heavy hearted. It’s not often I say this but the morning had no redeeming features I could find; it was wet, cold and very, very unlike spring. 2013 was a pretty bad spring, starting very late with heavy snows in the dying days of March like this one. But at least the sun came out and things dramatically improved. 2018 has tested even my usually stoical resolve, I must say.

Rolling through Kings Hill on an errand mid morning, everything was headache-grey – the roads, the buildings, the sky.

It’s rare I feel so bleak about the weather.

April 12th – another wet, grey and frankly unlovely day. Where is the sun? The warmth on my back? The neighbourhood cats I’m normally welcoming back on warm evenings as I cruise jacket less through the suburbia of Walsall?

I watch, I wait, I plough on in the murk and damp.

Meanwhile, the damp, raindrop bejewelled Kings Hill Park continues to entertain with a variety of flows and planty of spring promise.

Soon. It’ll be soon. You’ll see.

April 9th – I’ve been passing this rather beautiful white shrub for a week or more now and have absolutely no idea what it is. It’s growing in a clump of cotoneaster in an industrial estate flower bed in Wednesbury. 

In the damp beauty of a misty morning it was absolutely gorgeous. Anyone know what it is?