Non Flowering Plum Tree

Each year I am newly amazed at how quickly spring comes here in the central valley. Winter is thankfully short for us, while I am hearing news reports of blizzards and storms and rain and tornadoes in other parts of the country we are enjoying the best time of the year here. A few months from now it will start getting hot, but right now the flowers are blooming and the breezes blowing and even if the air may not be all that clean, the windows get opened up and the days are quite enjoyable.

I wanted to get a few pictures of our backyard non flowering plum tree before all the blossoms fall, a name that still confuses me since it does produce beautiful flowers but no plums. I guess that is the non flowering part of it all, no fruit.

The rose vine or whatever this plant is, I've long ago forgotten the name of it, is also in bloom with tiny yellow flowers.

They don't last long either but sure are pretty for a few weeks.

Out front we have a big flower bed that has been taken over by African Daisies and in a few weeks it should have hundreds of flowers blooming. No pictures today but some soon!

Keith has been telling me that the hills that he goes through on the train are covered with California poppies and the purple lupines. We have not had a day when Keith has been home and rested enough  to take a drive outside of town yet, but hopefully this year we will get a chance to do so and see the hills in all their glory. There was a story on the local news about people stopping alongside Hwy 58 on the way to Tehachapi to look at the flowers and take pictures, a highway that is a freeway and you are not supposed to stop along said freeway unless it is an emergency. The Highway Patrol wanted to remind everyone that it is dangerous to stop alongside the road and even more dangerous to cross the road to get a better view, and that wildflowers are not an emergency!

This is a picture I found on the internet of what is making people stop along freeways.

Hopefully we will get a chance to go see them in person sometime soon. We don't have to stop along the freeway since we know the back roads to take to get you right in the middle of the hills.

Hunks of Meat and Flowers Blooming

The other day Keith got home from work early in the morning and decided to go do some shopping, then decided he wanted to invite Joe and Elizabeth over for some barbecue dinner. He spent a bunch of money on pork tri-tips and whole chickens then had to do more shopping to get the things you stick the chicken on to roast them in the barbecue, then spent the afternoon in the back yard drinking beer and cooking meat. He thought everything was cooked, the outsides of the chickens and pork tri-tips (which I didn't even know there was such a cut of pork) were crispy and delicious looking but when he started cutting into it all, blood blood and more blood. Gag.

So, as the kids got here for dinner, the chicken and pork got cut up and put in the oven to finish cooking.

When we finally sat down to eat, Keith gave Millie some big chunks of pork, which she grabbed up in her little mouth and then took to the flower bed to bury. I checked Keith's work lineup after we finished eating and it looked like he'd be going out in the middle of the night, so he went to bed early and the kids went on home. Then later as I was watching TV Millie wanted to go outside and I let her, thinking she needed to do her business.

Her business was digging up the previously buried pork meat rather than taking a tinkle, which I found out when she came to the door to be let back in and she had a big chunk of it in her mouth. Before I could grab her to get it out of her mouth, she was running down the hall with it, presumably to re-bury it in some bed pillows or a laundry basket. I did catch up with her and took the meat away, much to her dismay.

Then later we repeated the whole digging up the meat thing with the second piece being brought into the house, but this time I caught her at the door.

She wasn't real happy with me taking the meat away so I made her a plate of some of the chicken and some cottage cheese which seemed to appease her.

She has gone back to one of the burying spots a few times, looking for more treasure.

As we were sitting in the backyard waiting for food to cook, I noticed that our non-flowering plum tree is flowering. Yeah, that doesn't make sense, it flowers but no fruit so I guess that's the non-flowering part. Just a few blooms so far, but give it a few days and it will be covered in flowers.

We've been letting the cats go out and enjoy the weather quite a bit these past few weeks, Buddy has really been enjoying it to the point where he was outside almost all day yesterday and well into the evening. He was laying in wait under the bird feeder hoping for a fat juicy bird which I'm sure he wouldn't know what to do with if he caught one, other than play with it.