Spring

 

    Spring has arrived here in the San Bernardino Mountains after a very hard winter. 

Things are greening up, and it’s a lovely time to walk by the lake.  

Cherry and apple trees are blooming.  

Dogwood blossoms are forming on the dogwood trees.  Soon there will be beautiful, large white flowers. 

Patches of wild little yellow violets are blooming in sunny spots in the forest.  

And daffodils are showing their cheerful faces on the hillsides.  The lilacs have put out little new green leaves, but no blooms yet.  They’ll probably bloom in another week or so.  

The small clump of violets that I transplanted from my mother’s garden over 40 years ago are blooming.  They’ve tried to spread throughout the garden, but the raccoons, cats and skunks keep squashing them.  I had to cover this, the original clump, with a chicken wire cloche to save them (removed for the photo).  

A beautiful spring sunset at Lake Gregory.

My World This Tuesday

We're having a very blustery day here today.  The little squirrels hang on tight and stick to traveling on the larger, more unmovable branches. 

The wind is roaring through the pines and cedars and the bare branches of the oak trees...

And there are a few clouds floating around making shadows on the bare, yet to be green mountain meadows... 

While the daffodils are dancing so fast I couldn't get a non-blurry photo of them! 


To see more of what's going on around the world this Tuesday, click here.

A Quote for Monday

Logic will get you from A to Z, but imagination will get you everywhere.  Albert Einstein

Springing Back to Winter

I'm glad I was able to get these photos a few days ago, because the weather abruptly switched from spring to winter last night.  (To enlarge photos, just click on them). 

Last night we had a cold, hard rain with plummeting temperatures and today we had a hail storm.

These daffodils, and the ones below, were planted by a community group in Twin Peaks several years ago. 

Quite a few of the daffodils were already past their peak of bloom when I took these photos, but, luckily for me, there were still enough of them blooming to make a cheery show!

Linking with:  
Through My Lens 
Monday Mellow Yellows
Macro Monday
Our World Tuesday

Wordless Wednesday - Smiles

Sunday Sunlight

I finally got outside for a bit today.  I've had some sort of semi-nasty stomach bug since Thursday.  It's leaving, but oh sooooo slowly.  My friend had it about two weeks ago, so I'm guessing it was a gift (although I know it wasn't one she would have wanted to give) from her.  Hers lasted about six days, so I'm hopeful mine will be gone soon, since I'm feeling a bit better every day.  And, daffodils always cheer me up!

Fall in Spring

Spring is still going strong up around the 7,000 foot level. (That's around 2,133 meters...maybe.  I'm not very good at conversions).  This oak tree is just putting out her new leaves... 

A tiny bit of spring masquerading as autumn's bright jewels. 

I even found a clump of daffodils! 

Spring starts her journey at the bottom of the mountains and slowly climbs, so I have the opportunity, if I drive down and follow it up, to catch spring photos for a couple of months.  I do the same thing in reverse for the autumn...start up high and follow it down the mountain.

Sunday Sunlight

The daffodils are pretty much finished blooming now, but the ones I planted where there is a bit more shade than sun are still looking well.  Even when they're completely shaded they look like cheerful little spangles of light the sun forgot to take with him as he moved across the sky.

A Quotation for Monday

"...I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils, 
Bringing the springing grass and the soft, warm April rain."
John Masefield 

I sure hope he's right about the rain part...

Robins and Daffodils

There are two robins in this photo, but I never saw the second one until I cropped this photo.  It's over on the left, kind of centered between the top and bottom of the photo.  You can just see a little of its head.  Maybe he or she is the robin's baby? 

The Vagaries of Spring

It felt more like Summer than Spring here today; our temperature high was 70 degrees F!  Definitely not normal for late April.  

I was so tempted to pick up some annuals and plant them, but I managed to resist.  I remembered when, three years ago, I spent nearly $100.00 on annuals that I bought in a moment of madness in early April while visiting a nursery down the hill (6,000 feet lower in elevation and 30 degrees F warmer) with my sister.  Two weeks later they all died when the temperature dropped to 25 degrees F.  Sadder but wiser, now I wait.  

Before Global Warming really kicked in, I always waited until May 30th to plant anything.  The seasonal changes were more reliable than they are now and anyone who had lived here for a while knew that to plant before May 30th was just asking for disaster.  Now, I plant during mid-May and hope for the best.  And if I've guessed wrong and Nature plays her tricks, I watch enviously while the gardens of the gardeners who planted in April (and got lucky) bloom way ahead of mine.  Oh, well.

 I did pot up some pansies today that I bought down the hill last week and 'hardened off' by putting them outside for the warmest hours of the day, then bringing them inside for the night. 

Now the temperature has dropped to a chilly 39 degrees F and a cold little wind has picked up, so I've made a fire in the living room fireplace, and I'm going to have a mug of hot tea along with the peanut butter cookies I just baked.  The cats are asleep in front of the fire but the dogs are waiting not-so-patiently for the cookies they know I'll share with them. I just wish my Great Dane wouldn't drool...

Where!?!

I've been looking around a lot of blogs today because I've had to stay inside. I was outside all day yesterday and there's something out there that really aggravated my allergies. I can't think what it would be; there's nothing blooming except for daffodils and pussy willows and they've never been a problem before. Today it's horribly windy (gusts to 70 mph) so I decided the prudent thing to do would be to stay indoors.

I noticed a lot of blogs have a thing called "Feedjit" that shows where you're from. Or, at least, I guess that's what it's supposed to do. It has me showing up from various different places that are, at minimum, 150 miles away from here and one place is about 600 miles from where I live (I had to look it up on a map). And I haven't arrived from the same place twice! Ahh, the Internet...a mystifying place indeed.

Grumble, Grumble...

I drove down to my sister's today to help her plant her annuals. Her Irises are already blooming, which made me grumble about how nothing, NOTHING, is blooming up here in the mountains yet. Not even my Crocuses or Daffodils. But here we are, planting Impatiens, Pelargoniums, Lobelia, Ivy Leafed Geraniums, Begonias, Zinnas, Lisianthus and just too many others to list. She said that she would love to be able to grow what I have that blooms in the Spring: Tulips, Apple and Pear trees, Lilacs, Dogwoods, and Columbines.



My sister and I do this back and forth grumbling every Spring. But really we both love being able to have the best of both worlds. The soil is still too cold to work up here, so I really like being able to plunge my hands into the earth (ungloved, so my nails are always a mess in growing season, but if I wear gloves I can't tell if the plants' little roots are comfortably settled :D). My sister is always glad to escape the heat where she lives and come up a couple of times in the Autumn and help me plant bulbs and harvest apples and pears.



My sister is in her seventies and I'm in my fifties. For the past several years I've been very aware that my sister may not be able to do these things the next season, so I treasure these times even more.



But as of now, she's strong and healthy (knock on wood) and sent me home yesterday with some Pansies that were beginning to be unhappy with the warm weather.








I put them in a hanging basket so if it gets below freezing (as it most surely will several more times before the end of April) I can just bring them into my studio. When temperatures permit, they hang outside my kitchen window, on the sunniest side of the house, and I smile every time I look at them.