Nature Friday

The local council, in what they say is a nod to greener values, has been leaving vast swathes of roadsides, grass verges parks, playgrounds and common spaces unmown this year.  The idea is that they will somehow become meadows resplendent with wildflowers, and support a wide array of insects and small animals that might make homes in such 'wildernesses'.

The reality is that they have probably saved a lot of money, and the roadsides and grass verges have come up a dense crop of barley grass and little else.  Barley grass is an annual grass that grows in poor soils,  produces a hairy seed head that sticks in your socks (for distribution purposes) and causes a great deal if irritation.  It is not pretty and not many species thrive on it.

Generally speaking the town looks scruffy and unloved, and the kids have lost a lot of space they used to kick footballs round on. (A tiny patch remains on this heath.)

Stockheath Common, a small triangular green space with houses on all sides, does however look rather charming in the late summer sunset and the decision to leave it to nature (at least over the summer months) was, this year, probably a good one.  The locals might be less impressed if we had experienced another drought summer and something (or someone) caused a fire to start in the long dry grass.  A group of travellers were camped there for a while at the start of August, but they have moved on and left their campsite tidy, so it is once again the preserve of dog-walkers and of small kids who like to make dens in long grass.

Knapweed - taken in the same sunset light!

Dens in the long grass???

Yarrow

Managed meadows in farmland would eventually be cut for a hay crop, and I do wonder what will happen to ensure that this townscape meadow will in fact be meadow again next year (rather than eventually overwhelmed by brambles).