A short walk just north of town on Saturday gave me the feeling spring is really here. I will provide the text tomorrow, but there is lots of activity in response to the recent rains and warmth. The young Lupines were abundant on a hill top along the PG&E power line just north of town. I'll have more to say about the flowers and bugs tomorrow, and also more photos.
Not exactly the tomorrow I had in mind. It is now Wednesday. The excitement I felt when I stumbled across the "scene" in the above photo is that of recognition. You can tell from the pine needles that the little bundle of lupine leaves is only an inch or two across. To a botanist or serious naturalist, recognizing a lupine from its earliest leaves is a no-brainer. But, that's beside the point. The excitement stems from (no pun intended) recognizing the "arrival" of a friend after winter, a period of several months when no new greenery poked its head through the soil. It's a kind of reawakening made even more exciting by the act of recognition.
As soon as I spotted the first one, they seemed to be everywhere. Then it became fun to photograph them in different settings and think about their slight adaptations to different micro-climates within a few yards of one another.
This looks like one of the early-blooming yellow violets of which we have around 5 or 6 local species. I'll need to review them from last spring's photos. Then, a bit later, we get white ones and blue ones - not counting the cultivated ones in people's yads.
This type of fungus always makes me think of a scene in Lewis Carroll's
Through the Looking Glass.
Ostensibly photographing an immature beetle, but later appreciating the aesthetics of dry leaves of California Black Oak even more.
Possibly an early Delphinium? Need to review photos and text from March of last year.
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