Blackthorn flowers cover their bushes before the leaves begin to break. Long stretches of the hedge along Langley Road, dropping down out of town from Merry Hill, are planted with blackthorn. These were the first flowers to start to open, in a oprocess which should now be at its height.
A tiny snail in the middle of one of the leaves in the middle of a patch of wild garlic (ramsoms).
Blue tits watchful, wary even as they flitted from branch to branch playfully.
Wild garlic is one of the plants of woodland d floors. In spring they grow quickly, getting their flowering season over before the leaves on the trees overhead throw the ground into permanent shade. Here the flower buds were just beginning to show on an already pungent patch of wild garlic by the canal near Aldersley Junction.
A bee, with its body all covered in fur so that more pollen will stick to it as it goes from flower to flower. Going from catkin to catkin on a pussy willow, they too looking furred to hold the pollen they produce.
Blackthorn, with its long and vicious thorns, has flowers which appear before the leaves. In hawthorn the order is reversed. Here the blackthorn flowers are still tight little buds.
