Preamble . . .
I don't seem to have written this well.
I enjoy living in Halifax so much I'm surprised when little things remind me of the past. That was the intention of post. But instead of saying it clearly I appear to have given the impression that I don't like it here at all. The opposite is the case. I'm really, really happy to be here - and the photographs are of things which delight me.
It'll get confusing if I re-write the post. That could result in email subscribers receiving a different version from those reading it straight from the page. But I think I must put in this extra little bit as a retrospective preface - I LOVE IT HERE!
From this point on, the post is as it was.
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Here is my new 'lawn'.
Grass growing on the anti-social cobbles designed specially for not walking on. |
I'm thinking inevitably about the things I miss about Dorset and the things which are missing here; which are not necessarily the same. Nor are they quite what I would have expected.
I went for a walk on Christmas Day and what I missed was not the sound of the sea but the absence of dried out Prickly Lettuce (Lactuca serriolla) stalks rammed up against walls. I haven't properly worked out why. It might be that I knew in advance that Halifax is sea-less so the lack of a tide hasn't come as surprise. The pain of that absence becomes a part of life; a familiar dull throb of discomfort. But it never struck me to wonder if there would be prickly lettuce. I didn't know I'd mind. So I was surprised both by its not-here-ness and that it hurt. Is there really no prickly lettuce here or is it simply that I haven't walked past it yet? I have a kind of hankering, an irritability springing from 'not-knowing'.Not that it's pretty. It's a straight up plant with boring leaves and small, uninteresting flowers and at this time of year it's nothing but a dried out twig anyway. So who would care? This is the next lesson - that when missing things no-body else has noticed, one can feel very alone.
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| Part of my new moss garden. Miniature sculpture. |
I've experienced it in lesser ways in Dorset . . . someone pours weed-killer onto a row of urban wild plants along the foot of a wall. They want rid of them. Other passers by are unlikely to identify the difference and I'm thinking 'where have they gone?' But such plants are resilient. They either grow back the next year or, failing that, nearby.
But not growing at all? That's something else.
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Here's something Halifax has in common with Dorset
Common Orange Lichen (Xanthoria parietina) |
I'm sitting here asking "will I miss Alexanders? Chicory? Vipers Bugloss?" Yes. But differently. They don't usually grow in the middle of towns so I'm not looking for them. It's part of the background ache. But I'd made the mistake of thinking urban plants grow in urban places and are, therefore, ubiquitous. Of course they may be. But maybe not. Dorset is warmer. Sunnier. Will I find Black Medic here or does it just like the south? Scarlet Pimpernel?
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Escapees add an exotic element to an invisible street garden.
This one is wandering over a wall while retaining its domestic roots. |
At the same time . . . of course I sort of did know things don't just pop up all over the place merely because they are familiar . . .
I even wrote about hoping there would be dandelions. I'm inconsistent. And I discover there were so many thousands of dandelions along Dorset paths and roads and hedgerows I'd put them more in a more conventional wild-plant bracket.
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This is something I would never have come across near my old home.
Indeed, I don't yet know what it is I'm looking at! |
On Christmas Day when I went out to look for street plants, I set out in a business like fashion. I knew there would be some - there always are. And I would begin to construct from them my invisible urban garden. But I hadn't expected grief for such mundane things as prickly lettuce. And I hadn't expected to be swept by the power of shape. Moss grows everywhere in some form but each patch, even of the same variety, builds itself into distinct and therefore missable sculptures. I'll move from here one day so will I risk loving things that I will inevitably leave behind?
I hesitate.
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| On Christmas Day I went to visit the Alder I am 'following'. |
I should be able to say 'yes, of course'. But I've had to think about it - hard - and with some gritting and grinding of teeth have decided Street Plant posts will continue in their new location. People with broken hearts can learn to love again.
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| Flowers on Christmas Day! |
Here then, may I proudly introduce you to my new, wild, scattered urban garden.
And assert, almost as an item of faith, that there is growth where there appears to be none.
Yes. Even when there really appears to be none.
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Because Halifax is in a sort of bowl in the hills,
these three blocks of flats are a distinctive identifier for the town.
(Just as Big Ben is for London.) |
When I first visited Halifax - looking to see if it would be a good place to live - I was struck by the amount of ragwort. It sprouted out of pavements and walls and old chimneys and public planters. In particular there was a long embankment of it between a car park and part of the busy road system that skirts the quieter and partly pedestrianised town centre. I can't remember what was on this embankment last year but it wasn't ragwort. Earlier this year it was a yellow sea of oil-seed rape flowers. I assumed this was random. Who plants ragwort? Who sows oil-seed rape apart from farmers?
