18th May from the West Cliff Green, Bournemouth

Despite the spilt milk, hazy sky, the day is quite warm enough to sit out on the beach. The breeze is light and the sea rumpled. The cliff top shelter is still frequented by pigeons where Omar comes to feed them with rice. It is the time of the bigger plants to make themselves known. Teasels, docks and wild carrot and the big broad leaves of the acanthus which will become Bears’ Paws later. Although the young saplings in the Murdered Trees Memorial space have been bent naturally by the wind, someone has been and tied them straighter to their supports. They are surrounded by a grove of red campions.

From 18th May 2022

The drizzle stops. The sky is grey but oddly luminous and it reflects silver off the sea and the puddles. A group of students from one of the language schools gather expansively in the clifftop shelter. The sound of voices and the sweet scent of tobacco fill the evening air. Dunnocks have claimed the bushes and sing as they flit from branch to branch. The goats are having their supper tearing ravenously at the low branches. Then the rain patters down, harder this time. Lightning dances on the horizon. Blackbirds sing. Pigeons coo. #westcliffgreen #eastcliffgoats #may #Bournemouth #spring

From 18th May 2021

Grey, then blue then a jumble of jostling silver edged grey clouds and flat blue sky all day long. The sun does its best dodging in and out of the confusion of the sky but the temperature dips and rises throughout the day and the sea is but a bit player in the scene. No actual rain but everything is refreshed and revived by the downpours and thunder storms of the last few days. It is the season of the long grasses on the clifftop while blackbirds and thrushes have found new energy for their songs.