June 29th – Ever wondered what that hill was on the horizon? Find dioramas a bit hit and miss? There’s a great piece of software for your smartphone called Viewranger.
It’s actually a quite good 2d/3d mapping application, but has this great augmented reality feature where you hold it to a view with the camera and it labels what you can see.It’s quite remarkable, and that functionality is free, too!
It was great for the view from Morridge over the Roaches.
June 28th – One thing that is absolutely beautiful this year and I haven’t mentioned to my shame is the vetch. This beautiful, delicate purple flower is absolutely everywhere and very beautiful.
It’s one of my favourite summer flowers and lasts for ages, whilst growing in some of the most inhospitable edge lands.
A real summer treasure.
June 26th – Passed on the way home from work at Rushall Square.
Thankfully, it’s reported that nobody was seriously hurt.
I genuinely have no idea.
June 21st – It’s good to see that one place the Canal and River Trust mowers didn’t go is the meadow and embankment alongside the new pond at Clayhanger, where orchids, ribwort plantain, birds foot trefoil, ox-eye daisies, buttercups and many species of grasses are thriving, much to the appreciation of the bees, bugs and birds that rely on them.
Long grass and meadows are not some untidiness to be dealt with: They are essential to our ecosystem.
June 16th – Always nice to meet a hog going about it’s business and this lovely one was near the Fullelove Memorial Shelter at the foot of Brownhills Parade.
Healthy and very large, it was far too busy to pass the time of day and scuffled off into the night and away from my attention.
Uplifting.
June 14th – Changing places.
On the left stood Brownhills Market for near enough 25 years. where the low block facing me is was the site of Silver Court Gardens, once the 5th most deprived housing estate in the country.
Not now; a row of new build gables, a block of modern apartments. Silver Street has been transformed. There is life and activity here in what was for several years a barren, windswept wasteland.
I’m glad to see this change, and I welcome the people that will live in these places. New builds, new starts and new people.
Not all change is bad.
June 14th – On the way to work on a warm but windy and wolfish Thursday, I stopped to look back down the canal I’d just ridden along. It’s so green and verdant now, sow beautifully limpid and peaceful. Hard to imagine that a few short weeks ago this was barren and grey, and soon enough it will return to the dormant, winter state.
Bless the summer, bless the green, bless the weather.
June 13th – One of the more fascinating things about the commonly derided and scorned Canada goes is their propensity to social support between families.
On the way home from work this evening, four adults (one dallying out of shot) and two broods of goslings numbering a dizzying total of 12 youngsters in two distinct stages of growth indicated that two families were hanging out together and probably sharing childminding and security duties.
Can’t think of any other wild birds that do this.
Lovely to see, and I got hissed at in quadrophonic!
June 14th – The King Of Kings Hill is still napping outdoors even though the sun’s gone in. Old Sam continues to enjoy this most temperate of seasons.
But interesting to see the effect the cooler day has on his sleeping position, in a ball, on top of the retaining wall, pointedly and resolutely with his back to the passing world.
Sorry, but I’m a little bit in love with this old chap.
June 12th – Passing the embankment of the new pond at Clayhanger I noticed that the kidney vetch is showing well this year. One of only two places I can think of that it grows locally, this plant, once thought to be good for healing wounds, is profuse in the sandy soil of the embankment.
Consisting of individual flowers on a fluffy, down covered flower head, it’s a storage and very beautiful wayside delight at this time of year.
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 