A flowering

Facebook recently informed me by email that I was tagged in a photo. It turned out to be this picture taken in North Carolina last year, and recently posted by Ryan Prescott. It’s a beautiful communication of how people can come together when the need arises and help each other.

This photo includes at least two people from California, several from Florida, one from Venezuela, and the women in sunglasses who I believe are from New York or that general area. We were all in North Carolina to help clean up after flooding and damage caused by a hurricane.

Sacramento Flowering Trees

Meanwhile, here in the Sac area certain fruit trees are very much in bloom.

I noticed the incredible profusion of these flowers when I went shopping yesterday. I went back today to photograph them at the light rail station where they are most prolific, Sunrise station in Rancho Cordova.

In this part of town some streets are lined with these trees. I am not sure of the exact species; they seem to be maybe an ornamental plum.

Many trees and plants in this region are flowering or leafing out right now. They know they have a relatively short window of time between when there is some rainfall and when that stops and it gets really hot.

These flowers won’t last long. The wind blows them away almost as fast as they can bud and mature.

On this trip I also noticed the redbuds blooming very strongly. We don’t have a lot of redbuds here; I don’t think they are native to this area. But they do grow well here.

Springtime is perhaps the perfect time to reflect on the importance of creative activities in the games of life. Where would we be without creation?

 

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Second Warm Period on the Palouse

The plants are popping out very strongly on our warmer days.

They seem proud this year. The weather was rough, and the warmth came late. They suffered this Spring, but came through it OK.

I hope we can do the same!

“I’m the best apple tree on the Palouse.”

Quail like sunny days, too.

Spring!

Dandelions: The yellow harbingers of Spring.

This year we had a mild, wet winter, followed by a late cool-down, then a sudden warm-up. The result: Everything seemed to bloom at once!

This made available many non-showy tree flowers, which don’t get photographed very often.

All these photos were taken last weekend.

Nature area trees

Ash flowers.

Maple flowers.

Willow flowers.

Fruit trees

Flowering fruit trees.

In this area, most fruit trees are introduced. I haven’t tried to figure out here exactly which types of tree these are. All the showy-flowered fruit trees are in the Rose Family (Rosaceae) along with familiar fruits like raspberries and strawberries.

Meadow by the bike path.

Fruit tree flowers.

Bees (present but not pictured) pollinate all Rose Family plants. In contrast, most of the non-showy tree flowers are wind-pollinated, and their seeds wind-scattered.

Fruit tree in an urban setting.

Daffodils

Pullman daffodils.

Somebody planted a lot of daffodils! I have never noticed them as much as I did this Spring. They are all over the place in the more recently developed areas. And I mean , really all over.

Daffodils front runoff management area, Bishop Boulevard.

Redwing blackbird guarding his domain.

The “Walmart Embankment” and more daffodils.

Daffodils up close.

Introduced urban trees

Aspen flowers.

I found this white-barked aspen near the top of the “south hill” in the hospital’s garden. It is not native to this area, nor is the birch pictured below. Birch, besides being somewhat delicate trees and preferring the protection of a forest, don’t seem to do that well in this area, but that doesn’t prevent this specimen in the middle of downtown from doing the best it can to reproduce.

Birch flowers