David

View of a section of the 21 locks on the Birmingham Canal. The winding mechanism of Lock 19 is in the foreground. Lock 18 and, much further, the chimney of the city rubbish incinerator in the background.

View across a field to one of the small pieces of woodland just outside Wolverhampton.

I’ve not visited the wood, but it is in an area where lots of brooks run off Pattingham ridge onto the almost level land of a Smestow valley which is much broader than the present-day stream. Damp, marshy ground would be unsurprising.

Huge bunches of keys on an ash tree – and the morning was actually sunny.

Trees overhanging the stream which forms the axis of the Wom Brook Local Nature Reserve in Wombourne.

From the same bushes as the buds in the previous post, fatsia flowers in their clusters growing on spikes.

Fatsia – one of its other names is the false castor oil plant – is an exotic which flowers in the middle of winter.

Here are the as yet unopened flower buds from a bush in West Park.