16. It's a beautiful time of year!

(Photograph, April 5, 2025)

Blossom in the hedges. Trees and verges bursting into life.  Before long, nettles and all the excited grasses and annuals will be knee high and higher. 

Once it's up, light litter will catch in the upper layers, at least for a while. Heavier things, like glass, will leave a brief trace - if we come along soon enough, we may find it - but disappears quickly into the under-mass. Anything we don't find will be shattered, mangled and shredded when the seasons change and the verge-mowing tractor comes along again. Even the abandoned metal roadsigns (have you noticed them missing from the Aston Somerville road?) and their steel-frame stanchions are twisted and torn apart by the amazing heavy duty hammer flails of the mower.

Leaving aside what it means that someone's thrown out a Thatcher's cider bottle and it is broken and blade-ends up by the side of the road - leaving aside they've been drinking and driving through the village - imagine it's a fine day, and you're on horseback and having to step onto the verge because a car comes speeding or a lorry comes along; or your grandchild runs ahead, or you let your puppy off the lead; or your bicycle slips on a bit of local clay mud in the rain....

March 6, 2025.  Bottles very rarely break on their own, we find.
Occasionally they hit the road neck down, but generally they fall safely on the verge.
Wine, beer, spirits, cider. That some people are drinking as they drive through the parish is worth bearing in mind.

Which is one reason we litter-pick so regularly and so often, to find things before they disappear into the verge-growth and before the mower comes along.