Bud check

First stop, in the morning, at the suspected cork oak on Clay Hill Green. Rather obscured in the this snap by the willow coming into bud behind.

While a closer look revealed buds - but buds without signs of movement. Will they spring into life in due course? What looks like the buds of March in the first snap are just the remnants of the last lot of leaves, most of which have fallen, as previously noticed at, for example, reference 1.

The water works on West Hill were nearing completion, with the hole in the road now made good. Perhaps the water men have sloped off into town for a well earned break before they take down the barriers and the associated traffic lights. SQS (Stanmore Quality Services Ltd) on the case again, people whom Thames Water seem to make a lot of use of for finishing up and making good after they have finished the watery side of things.

Then the Screwfix whitebeam.

Things were a bit more lively here.

And later on in the day, a tulip nearer home which was quite clear about how many petals it had.

Just some of the fine trees in Court Recreation Ground. 17:00 being a very quiet and peaceful time to be visiting the place. Not even much, as far as I can recall, in the way of roosting bird noise.

Daffodils pretty much over.

But the white stuff, lower right in the previous snap was looking well. According to Google Images, wood anemones (aka Anemone nemorosa) which looks fair enough.

Seemingly not six petals, rather three petals inside and three sepals outside, distinguished on the other side by their pink tinge. Sometimes called tepals collectively.

A rather more challenging snap.

After working on my clue a bit, with 'a tree, maybe 10 metres high and 3 metres wide at the base, slowly tapering to a point at the top. Old cones much larger than the new ones', he opts for 'Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) or a closely related Juniper species'.

Some of the images turned up by Bing are the right shape, but the purple fruits are all wrong. While on this second image, he plumps for that suburban favourite, the Leyland cypress (Cupressocyparis leylandii). With a recent notice of the same to be found in the depths of reference 3.

What he really needs to do is to take the two together, but I think when I tried combining two images using Powerpoint, a little while ago, he just chose one of them, rather than making use of both. Perhaps something to try again; he may have come on a bit

Work in progress.

PS: the hole in the road seems to have slipped through the net, having been first spotted on the 28th March, three days previously.

The queue in the morning (with BH in the driving seat). Three or four way lights. Good tail back, back over the hill.

The substantial hole in the afternoon. I had thought that I had made rather more of it all. Or perhaps that was what I had intended when I left it out of reference 4.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/more-trivia.html.

Reference 2: https://sqsltd.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/02/clay-oven.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/wellingtonia-136.html.

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