This week has included both meteorological spring and a few days in London, always a bit ahead in growth terms of the ‘frozen north’ where I live, so it’s been good to enjoy some of what nature has to offer in a more urban environment.  At home, much of my nature-spotting was done on the way to and from work.  I’m sure the tree trunk covered in the algae Trentepohlia near Strawberry Lane has been getting a more and more vivid shade of orange as the winter has gone on and now it’s unmissable, looking like a smear of tangerine paint.  In fact Martyn commented that, if it wasn’t in high Shincliffe, it might well be graffiti!

I’ve written about Trentepohlia aurea before – it’s the green (really!) alga which partners with fungi in many lichens, so any fungal spores which land on this tree will have no problem picking up the algal partner they need to start growing. The bright orange colour comes from abundant carotenoid pigments, which mask the colour of the green chlorophyll which most plants and algae use for photosynthesis and allow this algae to survive in relatively hostile, exposed environments such as on tree bark and walls.

I’m pretty sure both Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera) and Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) are flowering locally, but the ones I’ve had a chance to get up close and personal with this week have been Cherry Plums.  Though the flowers look similar at first glance, on Cherry Plum the sepals which protect the flower in bud are reflexed i.e. bent back away from the flower, rather than spreading out below the flower as they do in Blackthorn.  The lack of spines is also a bit of a giveaway and in Cherry Plum the leaves come out along with the flowers, rather than afterwards.

As usual, there was something new to see on my way up Cardiac Hill.  There are now lots of Bluebell and Ground Elder leaves but I also spotted the first few Wood Anemone leaves poking through the leaf litter, one group sporting a tiny bud – not long to wait now!  I also snuck out one lunchtime for some fresh air and another look at the grassland around Maths and Computing, in search of Bee Orchid leaf rosettes.  Though I didn’t find any, I did notice lots of young Salad Burnett and a few Teasel leaves joining the party. 

The less welcome side of all these signs of spring is that hayfever season now seems to be in full swing, earlier than ever this year, even in Durham.  Male catkins of Willow, Alder and Hazel have to produce enormous amounts of their wind-dispersed pollen for female cones to stand a chance of being fertilised, so it’s not surprising that much of it finds its way into eyes and up nostrils!  In London, spring is still further ahead, with street Cherry and Magnolia trees in full bloom. We went to Kew for the orchid festival but the Magnolias, both the large-flowered Magnolia x soulangeana and daintier Magnolia stellata were the stars of the show for me. Although as a group which arose early in plant evolution, Magnolias are largely pollinated by beetles, one bedraggled queen bee was trying to dry herself out on a flower in the sun after a heavy shower.

It was not easy to motivate myself to go for a cold, wet early-morning run up through Pages Wood on Saturday but I was rewarded by the sight of a Green Woodpecker hunting for ants on the grass in the park – normally I hear their laughing call rather than seeing them.  The wood may only be 20 years old but it provides a lovely mosaic of habitats for wildlife, with a mixture of native deciduous woodland and more open meadow areas. I was not surprised to smell fox by the back gate as I went out but was amazed to see a fox sunning itself in full daylight when we got to Kew gardens, closing its eyes to bask for longer once it had taken a peek to ensure we posed no threat.

I’m currently reading A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles; a gentle and hopeful tale of how the Russian Count Rostov, condemned to house arrest by Bolshevik revolutionaries, manages to live a life full of small pleasures, despite his apparent total lack of freedom.

In the garden, Sweet Violets have joined the Hellebores and Primroses, bring more spring colour.  I’m hoping that the frogspawn in the pond has survived the two or three nights of sub-zero temperatures this week.

I’m not sure whether my culinary highlight this week was the Persian Ghormeh Sabzi and Tahdig I cooked for Martyn’s birthday or the delicious pre-theatre meal we had at Cinnamon Bazaar, near Covent Garden. 

The cultural highlight of the week was definitely going to see the musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London. The story of the brutalist Park Hill flats, which overlook the city of Sheffield, is told by skilfully weaving together the overlapping stories of three very different families who lived in one flat, between 1960 and 2019.  The set is fantastic and the acting very much an ensemble piece, which touches on the biggest political stories of the day in a way which brings to life both the isolation of refugees arriving in the city from Liberia, and the palpable loss of hope which followed the closure of Sheffield’s steel works, in the 1900s. It intrigued me how many knowing laughs the Sheffield-specific jokes garnered – maybe there are lots of Yorkshire exiles in London!