Country diary: The flowering blackthorn is a plant of glorious contrasts | Josie George

Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: Now is its time to shine, and having no leaves yet, it is purest black and white, spines and stars

While the magnolia's decidedly middle-class flowering dominates everyone's attention, I prefer the hidden, grubbier events of spring, the kind I know we'll find down the muddy path that runs between the industrial units and the strip of boggy wetland on our old housing estate.

It is a beautiful day. The sky is blue, the breeze fresh. There's litter here, sure - piles of it - and the loud whine of machinery, but my senses soon return me to the mouthy, joyful cascade of wren song. First we pass hawthorn holding its clean, new leaves in quiet readiness. But it isn't its turn just yet: right now it's the blackthorn's turn to take spring's stage.