August 5th – Looping back, still with a heavy heart, I stopped on the Pier Street bridge and noticed that more exploratory groundworks had been taking place on the old market site off Silver Street, clearly in preparation for new housing given permission there.
I’m all for that and hope work starts soon – anything that makes this area look less open and bleak is welcome to me.
That thought, at least, made me somewhat brighter.
August 5th – A day when I wasn’t feeling great. People I love are leaving for long holidays, which will make my personal life unusually quiet for a few weeks, and I had a dreadful migraine that disturbed my vision and made it impossible to read or concentrate.
I went out late to do some shopping, and spun out to Chasewater along the canal. The day had been squally, but right now there were blue skies and sun, and I admired the fields of wheat running across Home Farm to Sandhills. I guess these will be harvested soon as the adjacent oilseed rape has been, and the cycle resets for another year.
Today, I felt sad, but the sun and air did me good. But inside, the weeks of quiet to come were making me down.
August 4th – Spotted on the way home, again in the cat metropolis that is The Butts in Walsall, this shy (presumed) siamese. It wasn’t feeling the love at all and certainly couldn’t make an exit fast enough, but what a lovely puss. Shame it didn’t fancy an ear tickle.
Someone is very proud of that gorgeous cat. Never seen this one before.
August 3rd – It’s been a few weeks since I called at Telford, and was pleased to note the flowerbed at the station has now been replanted with late flowering plants and as ever, is a credit to those that look after it.
Resplendent in shades of red, white and blue the yellow flowers are curious and I’ve not seen them here before. Anyone know what they are?
A lovely bit of brightness on an otherwise dull day.
August 2nd – Another late summer and autumn bounty is fungi. A prime hunting ground for edible treats like these lovely field mushrooms and puffballs are the verges of industrial estates. Usually undisturbed, fungi prosper quietly here, and tend to go unstomped by mischievous kids.
From now until late autumn I will carry a cotton bag and knife to perform an impromptu harvest of anything tasty that would otherwise go unplucked.
This time of year does have some excellent things to commend it.
August 2nd – Travelling to work on a miserable morning in steady rain, it was nice to continue the fruit-spotting with these glistening, deep red crabapples near Bughole Bridge in Darlaston.
Crabapples – bitter, hard miniature versions of the more palatable dessert fruit – come in many varieties from green through russet to deep, deep red like these. These fruits seem uninviting to almost everything and these will remain on the tree until well into the new year, and rot on the ground untouched by birds or squirrels.
They must be awfully acid, but they are so very handsome when new.
August 1st – Also ripening well are the rosehips, the seed fruit of the various types of wild and feral rose that grow so beautifully by the towpaths and edge lands all over urban Britain. Sweet and juicy, they are sought after by birds, mammals and foragers alike.
Less common and indeed, quite a find, is the odd, hairy wasp gall growing on the same bush. This is the wonderfully named robins pincushion gall, or sometimes just moss gall.
Like oak galls, this curious mutation forms from a leaf bud on the rose stem injected with eggs and a DNA corrupting chemical by a tiny wasp. The chemical causes the leaf bud to mutate into this odd growth instead, and at the heart of the woolly mass is a solid core, in which the eggs hatch, and the larvae eat their way out when ready.
the gall doesn’t harm the rose particularly and is just another fascinating example of the ingenuity of evolution, with host and parasite developing together for thousands of years.
July 31st – Well, I said a bit dull. What I actually meant was under a really, really threatening sky.
As it happened, the rain never came, and the sky cleared again.
The weather may be challenging at the moment but at least it’s not boring…
July 31st – A good commute for cats. Remember the two sleepyheads I found in The Butts last week? Well, today they were up and about and feeling sociable.
The calico is a lot more elderly that I thought, but is a lovely-natured thing for sure, as is the younger black and white lad with almost red patches in his coat.
Pleased with my attention, he rolled, rubbed and purred his way into my heart.
The other black and white puss was a canal cat in the gardens of Barrow Close on the edge of the canalside at Walsall Wood. He seemed to be someone who knew what he was doing.
Lovely animals that brightened an otherwise dull commute.
July 30th – The deer are busy around Chasewater at the moment. I thought I’d spotted yesterday’s group of reds on the north heath, where I got pretty close without spooking them at all; but when I passed the rugby club the deer from the day before were still there.
That I can take a short journey around the park and see two listing groups of deer shows how populous they are becoming lately, and I do wonder if this might become a difficulty as they move around.
Deer are not known for their traffic sense and I worry that environmental pressures making them move around are forcing them into contact with traffic more.
They are so lovely to see, but with no predators I fear that soon the herds may need some management…
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