October 24th – Passed through Aldridge as night fell. i’d been running an errand, and had to get shopping in. The sky was clear, and if I’d been in a place with a decent view, I think the sunset was pretty good.
It felt cold, though, that onset of winter kind of cold. I could see my breath form clouds of missed, and the air felt hard, brittle and clear.
Appropriate, really, that British Summer Time ends tonight, and the darkness that haunts me returns.
Ah well, bring it on…
September 8th – It’s nice to see the fungi coming through now – I love this feature of autumn. Many folk don’t realise, but toadstools, balls and polypores are just the bloom of much larger organisms living out of sight. They really are unlike anything else in nature.
This roll-rim was growing on a grass verge in Wednesbury and was about eight inches in diameter. They start flat and become funnel-shaped as they age: it was a misty, wet morning and this one was gathering condensation well.
September 2nd – Like most people, I’m holding out for an Indian summer, but as I made my way home on Wednesday, it seemed the chance was slim. Caught by two very localised, heavy downpours, I was soaked by the second after having escaped the first by stating it out in an archway in Pleck.
It’s gone cold, too. Summer, come back!
August 31st – I rode out via Canwell and Middleton to Middleton Hall for a cup of tea and cake, all the while in steady rain. I nipped down to Bodymoor Heath, onto the canal and up to Fazeley Junction. Back along the old A5 to Weeford, then home via Shenstone.
It was warm enough, and there wasn’t much in the way of wind. The roads were quiet and the riding fast; but it was very, very grey and very, very wet. The countryside dripped silently little droplets of grey summer sadness.
As ever on grey days, there was fun and beauty to be found; the architecture of the canals – not just the bold redbrick house, but the small lock-keeper’s hut with the chimney for a stove (how cosy must that have been in winter?); the Kingsbury lock flight and greenery of the canalside reed bed. Fungus is growing well in the damp, and those polypores were huge.
Middleton Hall was as stunning as ever.
I just loved the hound tied up outside the cafe. He had an endearing way of looking at you with his head to one side. He was muddy and wet and had clearly been having lots of fun.
The red and orange spiny, furry growth on the rose stem that looks like a ball of thread? That’s a robins pincushion or Diplolepis rosea – a gall formed, like the oak galls by a wasp.
I asked a few weeks ago why only the oak is bothered by wasp galls; it’s not only the oak, but mostly. Lime trees, conifers and roses suffer too. Here, a wasp lays 60 or so eggs in a tiny, developing leaf bud, surrounded in a chemical which causes the plant to mutate and grow this furry aberration, which is internally quite solid with cavities for the larva to hatch and feed.
Nature is quite horrific in it’s fascination sometimes. Find out more about this curious parasite here.
August 14th – This one’s for Kate Cardigan, who was admiring the flowers on this very boat, moored at Brownhills, as some point on the day I took these pictures.
I’ve not seen this unusual, cream-coloured craft before, but I love the flowers and tomatoes growing on it.
Just the thing when riding through a dull, wet Brownhills on a miserable Friday.
July 24th – Noticed in Holland Park, the reships are growing orange and becoming more rotund; yet thankfully, the blooms show no sign of slowing up.
With a coating of fresh raindrops, they look superb. Beauty is there, even in the rain of a grey Friday afternoon…
June 13th – A wet, miserable day, with the weather only clearing in the early evening. I headed out on surprisingly puddle-free towpaths into a glistening, dripping wet green.
I went out with the intention of comparing the Nikon to the Sony on the same/similar shots. The Sony may have a great interface, but the image quality in poor light can’t hold a candle to the Nikon. Interesting.
The flag irises are doing well this year – huge beds with lots of flowers all along the canal through Brownhills and up to Chasewater. After a brief break the gorse is flowering again, and the ox-eye daisies on Chasewater Dam were a delight.
After most of the day stuck indoors, a real tonic.
June 2nd – A grey, windy morning, but the temperature was rising. Running around on errands in the morning after the rain had stopped, I noticed all these wonderful wildflowers on one roadside verge neat Tipton.
There are all sorts here from common but beautiful daisies to oilseed rape, gone feral near the crash barrier.
It may have been a chilly, grey spring, but the flora is thriving, and I don’t think I’ve ever known a spring this lush and beautiful.
May 29th – I don’t know why, but I find these oak galls a bit horrible. They are distorted leaf buds, into which a wasp injects it’s egg and a chemical which causes the tree to grown the gall instead of a leaf stalk. The larva lives within the growth, feasting on it. When mature, the wasp eats it’s way out and the life cycle continues.
This tree on Clayhanger Common is peppered with these tumour-like galls – they look like fruit. The gall doesn’t harm the tree particularly, but it’s a very visible parasite.
there are many different types of gall wasp, all with different methods and growths. I’ve not seen this one before, and am unsure what it is specifically.
Nature can be very odd sometimes.
May 19th – Most of the day, the weather was dynamic. Sun, rain, wind, hail, sun… but even in the sun, it still looked black over Bill’s Mothers. The coos knew what they were doing.
I got soaked three times. But the rain passed as quickly as it came and it wasn’t cold.
May. It rages and it roars and it blows; but usually, it creeps out on tiptoe, spent from all the tantrums.
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