Friday the 13th. Twice?!!!

 A little over two weeks ago, on Friday the 13th, I drove to Chico to do some errands.  Silly to drive that far for the particular errands on the agenda.  An ulterior motive was to get a sneak preview of the spring wildflower show.  One might tend to dismiss the roadside weeds while driving 70+ miles per hour while wearing headphones or using a chatting on a mobile phone. That's why I don't do those things.  Driving with the windows open, taking in the sounds and fragrances, I get excited about stopping to get a close-up look at the wild radishes.  Even if you're not familiar with technical terms like spike, raceme, and panicle, it only takes a few minutes to notice things about the radishes like the fact that the flower bloom from the bottom up.  Note that on the left side of the photo (of the above radish) the flowers have "gone to seed."  Fresh blooms are in the middle, and flower buds are at the top. 

Within a few yards of each other I found white, yellow, and pink varieties of wild radish.  Note the four petals may be seen as a cross.  Thus, the old nae for the family was Cruciferae.  Prodice people and nutritionists still speak of the Cruciferous vegetables - broccoli, mustard, radish, cauliflower, etc. - there are many.  For interesting technical reasons the family is now called Brassicaceae.  Perhaps more about that sort of thing in  later post.  And, as followers of this blog know, I always jump at the opportunity to photograph a flower being visited by a bug or bird.
Adventurous amateurs, suspecting that these are radishes, might pull one up by the roots and take a whiff, or even a little taste.  Definitely radishes.
On that same drive, I took a 100-yard side trip on the Cherokee Road (to Table Mountain) to see if the Shooting Star were blooming in one of my favorite spots.  They were!  To be continued tomorrow with a few more photos and stories.  Then, onward to my more recent Chico trip on Friday the 27th.  Lots of changes in the two weeks that passed.  Then we move on to thoughts about the forthcoming Friday the 13th in March.  For now, I need to do some more school work.