Tag: wildflowers

June 18th – A bit of a disaster, photographically. I forgot my trusty camera, and was reduced to my phone. I’ve never used the phone for close up stuff before, and took 20-0dd pictures of wildflowers that looked OK on the screen in sunlight, but turned out to be out of focus smudges of colour.

The only images any good were of the new pond in Clayhanger, and the remarkable meadow that surrounds it. Alive with buttercups, dandelions, vetches, trefoils, clover, and multiple species of grass. It’s buzzing with insects and small mammals, and really is a place to explore and take in with all the senses.

A beautiful thing, rendered rather flat by a poor camera. My apologies.

June 17th – I love lupins. These tall flowers grow wild along the canal towpaths and scrubs of Black Country canals, and set the cuts ablaze with purples, lilacs and pinks at this time of year. I don’t suppose they’re a native species, I suspect more of a  formerly cultivated feral fancy from gardens. But they seem to thrive untended on the rough embankments and thickets alongside out waterways.

When I see lupins, I know it’s summer at last.

June 15th – Returning from the Canal Festival at Pelsall, I stopped in the sunshine to check out the canal side wild flowers. I’m interested in them all – the only one I recognise being Bullrush. I’m particularly interested in the blueish one bottom left. Think it might be an escaped ornamental. There’s certainly plenty in bloom right now, and it’s all wonderful.

June 10th – A day of pottering around on errands and short journeys, during which I spotted these lovely huge poppies growing in the hedgerow in Hall Lane, Walsall Wood. They look too large to be native, and think they must be garden escapees. But whatever their origin, they’re very, very beautiful. A joy to the heart.

May 24th – Out early evening, and speeding towards Stonnall, I glanced to my left as I enjoyed the downhills. Fishpond Wood is gorgeous right now. After last year’s poor bluebell showing, they’re really excellent this year – and these are true British ones, not the Spanish impostors. The light was awful, but the atmosphere great.

I asked a mate about the tin shack. He said it used to house a pump, and he thought it was something to do with the quarry once. Never noticed it before.

These woods are private property and I was trespassing, so don’t do it, kids.

May 16th – Spring is here, too, at the verges, hedgerows and field-margins. An assortment of cowslips, bluebells, ramsons, alliums and other wildflowers are all competing for attention. This selection was growing at the side of the Chester Road, in a short, 10 years stretch near Stonnall. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m loving the spring, even when it rains…

May 10th – Spring is still going strong. Delightful flowers speckle the hedgerows, and the oilseed rape isn’t quite out yet on Home Farm near Catshill. Mrs. Swan still dozes the day away, hopefully on a decent clutch of eggs, and apart from the wind and rain (which are admittedly pleasantly warm), one might be convinced winter was finally over…

April 23rd – To be in England, in the springtime. I had to go to Leicester, and the patch of waste ground that so enthrals me at South Wigston Station was, as ever, a joy to the heart. Beebuzz and birdsong greeted me as I hefted my bike of the train in the bright, warm sun; peacock butterflies flitted about the lush flowers. Grape Hyacinth, primrose, gorse, dandelion. Performing for me, in this moment, in the middle of urban sprawl. A small wayside oasis, hardly noticed by anyone.

It doesn’t get much better than this.

August 31st – Here’s another one I can’t identify. I noticed it today growing up along the palisade fencing along the canal access steps of Walsall Wood High Street: some kind of creeper, the leaves are almost ivy-like, yet this isn’t evergreen or leathery in appearance. The single red berries are rather odd. Can’t ever recall seeing anything like this before.

August 27th – Still, there’s always nature to surprise you. This carpet of fringed water lilies has suddenly materialised near the canal aqueduct at Newtown, Brownhills. I’ve not seen this type of lily growing here before, and wonder if it’s a domestic escapee. Whatever the provenance, these flowers were delightful even in the rain, and they did lift my grim mood.