Continuity

 My friend Spencer Dykstra (at Spencer Dykstra Photography) enthusiastically reports that early blooming is underway at Table Mountain.  He posted a photo of poppies.  I was aching with envy.  I could feel his enthusiastic paragraph urging the seasons along.  I thought I'd try a little of the same.
There won't be any wildflowers blooming around Quincy for a while longer.  Still too cold.  Some people urge the process along by planting Crocuses and other early-blooming cultivated flowers.  See my previous post.  The Crocuses were planted in front of Patti's Thunder Cafe, formerly Morning Thunder.  Call it cheating if you will, but I've decided to help spring along by posting one of last year's poppies.

I encountered more concrete evidence of seasonal change when I took an early morning walk downtown yesterday.  There was a sudden increase in bird activity over previous days. Robins are a harbinger of spring of course, and there were lots feeding on the courthouse lawn and in many people's front yards.  I also saw and heard many Stellar's Jays and they were sitting side by side with Mourning Doves on the the power lines.  There were also Ravens and Brewer's Blackbirds, and maybe a few Starlings.  More birds than I've seen in my neighborhood since last November.  It's hard for me to capture birds with a camera, and I didn't have my camera with me which makes it even harder.  So, again in the spirit of urging the season along, I'm posting last year's hummingbird.  They will come back, won't they?
10:10 a.m.  I published the above around 6:30 this morning when I wasn't fully awake.  I just now realized that I made no sense of the title.  It was inspired by Spencer's recent post in which his words, stirred by early blooms, reminisced on past trips to Table Mountain in all seasons and projected ahead to exciting trips to come.  The poppies were just markers in a continuum, and anyone who visits a place like Table Mountain often enough (your own back yard probably qualifies) will develop a sense of being part of a cycle, a continuum, which has its own special features in every season and time of day.  I've always been curious about life cycles in the tropics.  We temperate zone people tend to think we have a corner on seasons, but even in lands with much less temperature variation than ours, there are undoubtedly seasons for individual species of plants and animals that are noticeable and provide the same feeling of continuity.  Thanks to Thomas Edison's light bulb, more and more people at all latitudes are staying inside most of the time.  Do they know what they're missing?