Methods of Investigating — week 1

Site: Two benches facing Regents canal and the surrounding garden beds. The canal is not visible whilst seated there.

Located on the high walkway of Coal Drops Yard (CDY). I find out the walkway is called Bagley Walk on a nearby map.

The following are notes from the first morning on site, Wednesday 24 September.

I’ve called the benches: bench A, on the left and
bench B, on the right when facing Regents canal.

View from bench B

Straight ahead WSW: Trees, only trees and sky visible. A variety of trees present, can attempt to ID some: Willow Salix viminalis both very tall and some smaller ones towards the canal bank; Hawthorn Crataegus monogyne; Alder (or maybe Beech? Broad leaf, glossy dark green with a slightly drooping habit that is tall and narrow with dark brown seed hanging in clusters at branch tips); an Acer of some sort; weeping silver birch; Ash Fraxinus excelsior.

And sky above, in morning a touch of blue, mostly grey/white cloud cover with sun brightening it up and more blue sky around 9.30am, the sun warms the place up too.

To the right NNW: 3 cranes on building sites in the distance (hard to say how far off that is), a rooftop of grey slate in the nature reserve across the canal, the top of a red brick structure which looks much older than its surrounds. It is a small rectangular structure with decorative brickwork inc arches and a chimney stack, the tops of rail lines, trees and behind them what looks like residential buildings quite new looking, turning further to my right 3 gas works 2 of which have contemporary buildings inside them. Also more garden on the walkway: over the yew/box hedge is a Cornus with deep red stems (Cornus alba most likely) and a plant behind which I don’t recognise with long straggling stems with thorns and odd-pinnate leaves, a kind of dog rose I think.

To the left SSW: A part of the CDY buildings curves round the canal older looking brick buildings that may have been part of industry on the canal at some point (ie. They look functional and the name CDY indicates an industrial heritage), 2 tall blocks (offices) a lot of glass and metal one has what looks like a roof top garden.Then further around to the left (SE) are two more tall buildings made from either a creamy coloured stone or concrete, the furthest to the left has very tall narrow glass panels all around and a rooftop garden with a line of small trees on the edge facing the building next to it.

Fauna record 

Started at around 9.15am

• Heard a coot, stood up saw a coot on the canal
• A seagull in air
• Tits flitting about in the trees
• Heard a wren
• A wood pigeon in a tree
• Pigeons flying over head
• Domestic dogs: a whippet in a suit!, a blue staffy, a bull mastiff or similar and others I didn’t record
• A garden orb spider, hidden next to its web

As the day warms more insects visible (9.44am on)

• 4-6 bees, fluffy large and small bumble bees, cannot ID
• 2 flies
• 1 3rd instar of the Southern Green Shield bug, sitting on a yew fruit

Plants recorded

Recognised

• Verbena bonariensis
• Sylvanian Family (personal common name) Greek horehound Ballota pseudodictamnus
• An aster with white flowers: Aster divaricatus or Eurybia divaricata ? (is this a plant that has recently been split from the aster genus?)
• A kind of persicaria: Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’
• Yew, Taxus baccata
• Box, Buxus sempervirens
• Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’
• A geranium
• A kind of cultivated knapweed?

Not recognised

A tall flower spike (now dried out to spiky round seed heads) coming out of a rosette of long serrated edge leaves, a mid green, smooth

I think it is Eryngium eburneum

A very tall grass over 2m in height with spiky bright rust coloured seed heads the grass stems are round and hard and a dark green – it may be a rush, rather than grass.

Perhaps it is a large cape rush: Chondropetalum tectorum

Weeds

Bindweed, small, possibly hedge?
False strawberry
Horsetail / Mares tail (which is a living fossil) 

At 10am someone started playing music in CDY, as in for public consumption through a fixed speaker, unclear where exactly it is coming from. It is pop music, sounds like a woman singing, easy going, inconspicuous, seems contemporary, I don’t recognise it.

People are passing by almost continuously, some stop to look over the wall at the canal below and the trees ahead. These seem to mostly be tourists ie. they do not seem in a hurry to be somewhere nor seem to be exercising. Others walk dogs, jog, drink coffee with headphones in, talk on the phone, chat amongst themselves, some stop to take photos of themselves or of the people they are with or a plant or the view of the canal. Many of the tourists are in pairs of one male, one female, they are mostly older, let’s say 55+.

There is a very small amount of trash (for London) on the site: some cigarette butts on the ground and some fallen into the spaces where there isn’t any firm grouting between the pavers, a chewing gum wrapper by the brick wall (silver, Extra brand) and some chewed gum near to the wrapper, a stack of cigarette filters in the garden bed behind bench B along with some discarded filters and small piece of thin plastic, stone fruit pits, a few pieces of cracked open sunflower seed shells in the yew hedge between the two benches.

These verbenas are well established, they have hard woody stems at the base, around 1cm in diameter. They have a huge numbe of flowering heads—makes their form quite dominant, its quite sculptural perhaps particularly at this early autumn time when the flowers are near to done, and the seeding parts look like upward motion and the leggy height of the verbena’s habit helps to exaggerate a sort of yearning stance. They move gently in the breeze and even when still they look like movement, like growth, striving or something like that.

I talk to some tourists, give them directions to (10.30am) to get down to the canal. They are New Zealanders, I recognise their accents.