Wolves Wild

One set of creatures which have benefited from the long spell of wet weather has been slugs.

This one was sliding along the canal towpath near Compton in the middle of the day a couple of weeks ago.

Late-blooming hollyhocks at the start of this month. The flowers are enhanced by the water drops on them after recent rain – a common theme this year.

Another gift from the new world, and now a common garden plant. It seemed like there was at least one raindrop still resting on every petal of this group of flowers.

Pictured at the start of this month, a willow shows the buds of next year’s leaves growing while the ones they are to replace are still on the tree, although showing their age.

It may have been a poor year for fruiting for many plants, but not for this rose bush growing in Barley Field.

View across the floral bed to a large tree whose leaves were just beginning to turn autumnal at the end of last month.
With this post, the number of posts has reached 2,000, with at least one post a day since September 2009. There have been more than 3,500 photos and 35 short videos, almost all taken within a day’s round trip travel of Wolverhampton.

I don’t feel any nearer to exhausting the range of subject matter than I did when the blog started.

Almost as ghostly looking as when the same cultivated plant was in flower.

Cross spiders are a common species in gardens. There are lots of them about at this time of year.

This one was easy to spot because the sun was catching its web, which still held some drops of water after overnight rain.

The rather odd appearance is of a young blackbird  just about to get its adult plumage (about six weeks ago).

Crab apples from a tree on the fringe of Barley Field, with just a hint of reddening in their mainly yellow skins.

This year has been a very poor one for many fruits and berries.

A few days ago, I went to the edge of the Barley Field in the Smestow Valley Nature Reserve. There’s a patch of blackthorn bushes there.

At this time of year they are usually covered in ripening sloes. This was the only one I could spot.

A pine cone and a sycamore leaf which had taken on autumn colours had fallen close together onto grass.