Blooming

It seems like spring happens almost overnight around here. One day all the trees are bare and the next day flowers are popping out. We have a lot of almond growers here in the valley, with orchards stretching as far as the eye can see. A few weeks before the blooms are expected, around mid February, you'll see beekeepers bringing hives into the orchards, and then a few weeks later, white blossoms everywhere. The blossoms don't last long, and in another week or two it looks like it's snowed all around the orchards, with the ground completely white with dropped blossoms.

Obviously I did not take this picture, since I am not that tall nor have I been up in a small plane lately, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like.


Nor did I take this one because every time we drive by the almond orchards on the way to the post office I forget to bring the camera.


Here in California you take your scenic lets go look at trees drives in the spring to see all the blooms rather than in the fall to see all the dead leaves like they do on the east coast. But we haven't done that yet this year. Gas is really expensive in case you haven't noticed, so no scenic drives for us right now.

We do have a little scenery in our back yard, though.

I don't know what this plant is, we got it a few years ago and it never did very well but it is struggling to bloom.


This is our non-flowering plum, which doesn't make sense to me since it quite obviously FLOWERS all over the place, but it doesn't bear fruit so that must be the non-flowering part of it all.


And this is either the flowering plum or the peach tree, can't remember which until they start dropping fruit all over the back yard.


The cats, especially Harri, have been wanting to eat the grass that they can smell when we open a door or window, with Harri having escaped a couple of times now to go eat grass. She runs out just far enough into the yard to get her some grass, then we scoop her back up, confine her once again, and bring some grass into the house for everyone to eat. Which is what I did right after taking these pictures, right after I opened the back door slider, right after Harri rushed out before I could catch her, and right after I scooped her back up again. Then a little while later Buddy started vomiting up his grass. Nice.