Tag: Bindweed

Bindweed

10.10 a.m., 52°F, 12°C; sun filtered through a high veil of cirrostratus: This bindweed escaped from the hedge and started climbing the golden hornet crab apple. Hopefully in the new year I’ll be more consistent in pulling the strands of bindweed out of the hedge as they appear.

This is hedge bindweed, Calystegia sepium, the species with the large white trumpet-shaped flowers. We’ve fought a successful battle against its smaller relative field bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis, in the front garden where it was spreading over the flower bed, the lawn and the pavement, simply by mowing it and cutting it back over the years.

As I draw, a robin and a dunnock hop about in the hedge and a chirruping rabble of sparrows erupts into the branches of the crab apple above me.

The crab apple looks at its worst at this time of the year; all the apples have turned to squishy brown pulp.

Cloud Base

heronspire in the mistA grey heron doggedly makes its morning rounds against an equally grey sky.

The cathedral spire, looming out of the afternoon fog, appears to connect with the cloud base.

The Brick-banked Beck

gulls by the beckbindweedThe Westgate gulls are there again, gyrating around some centre of attraction hidden down in the brick-banked beck.

A few white trumpets of greater bindweed remain on the twisting vines on a chain-link fence at the edge of a car park.

wasp clusterI return to a dozen wasps, some dozy, some dead, to evict from my studio this afternoon. The way three of them were huddling up in the top corner of the window this morning, I’d guess that they were  hunkering down for the winter but only the queens will make it through to the spring.

They’ve been nesting in the roof-space in an ever-expanding colony since midsummer.