Spring Has Sprung

One of the good things about being back in the northeast is the existence of four distinct seasons. I like that. We are now fully in the throes of a beautiful, fresh green spring. It's taken the trees a while to get with the program, but our view is slowly being taken away by leaves. I'm ok with that.

My favorite botanical part of spring -- by far -- is the bright shiny appearance of daffodils. I love daffies of all sizes and color combinations (although I don't really love doubles; a terrible thing to do to a daffodil). So we recently made a trip south to Longwood Gardens to admire the daffies at their peak. I meant to take the camera, but forgot it and was at the mercy of Michael and the iPhone for photos. I think he took less than 20. So sad. But here are a few of them for your viewing pleasure:

Darcy and the forsythia. 

The toothless garden princess. Wish it was a better view of her missing upper teeth!

In a field of small blue flowers.

In the amazing conservatory, where there is an expanded, awesome kids area since I last visited these gardens.

And finally, the bathrooms. Yes, this beautiful hall of living walls is the new(er) bathroom wing of the conservatory. Each of these doorways leads to a spherical, bright red private bathroom. They're awesome. You can see the interior here. (There are also YouTube videos of the bathrooms, but that seems excessive.)

We had a great day. If you live within striking distance of Kennett Square, PA, where the garden is located, you should treat yourself and go visit sometime. It was a great way to welcome and enjoy spring in the northeast.

Darcy In Spring

On the last weekday of spring break, Darcy and I drove past the beach. It was a beautiful day and there were lots of people there. Darcy asked, "Why are so many people at the beach today?" I guessed out loud that it was because it was so nice and the last weekday of spring break. She said, "Last day of spring break?!! You mean, on Monday I have to go to school?" Yes, I said. "But I thought spring break lasted ALL spring!" 


A minute of silence. Then, "Does summer break only last for a week, too??" Only when you're an adult, my small child.


Here are some highlights of Darcy's spring so far:

We visited Grandmother and Aunt Jo (Darcy's great-grandmother and great-auntie) at their new digs  and Darcy explored the trees in their backyard.

 Darcy and Hank shared a blue bath on April Fool's Day. They had a great time and probably got at least a little clean, too. Our spring break trip to Simi Valley gave Darcy and Hank a whole lot of cousin-time. They had a sleep-over, a trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific, and a bunch of play dates. And, obviously, a bath.

 Easter brought a good egg hunt for Darcy. She had already followed her rhyming clues to the basket that E. Bunny brought. This egg hunt involved sock-filled eggs and a leap-frog game in an egg. Very, very fancy. Just like Darcy in her new halter-top dress!

Darcy has also started t-ball! She's on the Storm -- named for a minor league team somewhere in San Bernadino County, maybe? Somewhere in that direction, anyway. You can just barely see that Darcy's hair is now long enough for pig-tails. More or less, anyway, and she wants them for every game. There have just been two so far (the one we were going to when this picture was taken was cancelled), but we'll have games every Friday and Saturday from now until June! All very weather-dependent, of course.

Early Spring on the Coastal Drive

Many months ago, we drove a long section of the Coastal Drive between Klamath and the Newton Drury Parkway. It is mostly dirt and often one lane in each direction. It is not heavily traveled and shows few signs of previous habitation. And then we came upon this bank:

Daffodils! My very favorite-est flowers! Daffies make me a very happy person, so we had to stop so I could take pictures of these feral, naturalized-for-who-knows-how-many-years lovelies.

And here's the great thing about the Coastal Drive. It is, as the name suggests, right on the coast for the majority of its length. So when I turned around to take a picture of the other side of the road, this is the view I captured:

Not too shabby, eh?

The Flower Search Continues

Flower season, while not as spectacular as last year's so far, is upon us in force now. A couple weeks ago, we had reason to be in Baker and took advantage of the proximity to Rasor Road for some flower hunting. We didn't find many exciting displays, but the lupine out there were just about to pop into bloom.

Michael and Darcy climbed rocks, of course, as they do when rocks are there to be climbed. They didn't find any flowers up there, but Michael spied some flowers on rocks on the other side of the road and I scrambled up to take a closer look because they didn't look like something we'd seen before. Michael is in uniform because he had just given a talk about Mojave National Preserve in Baker earlier in the morning.

As, indeed, they were not. These are beautiful Mojave asters, which we did not see at all last year except in our flower guides. They are a really beautiful flower and this bunch was situated in a little rock crevice at full bloom.


I get to go do our taxes now, so y'all will have to wait for the next flower installation. It is Flower Hunt: Teutonia Peak. Your sneak preview: we really, really wanted to find the recently-spotted resident mountain lion, but didn't.

Resident Assistant Gardener

Darcy has stepped up as the number one garden assistant this year. She has her own shovel and hoe. When she uses them, she says that she is "just like the Care Bears" because she has a book in which a Care Bear works in his garden with a shovel and hoe. She doesn't quite have the concept yet, but she tries and she has fun doing it, which is the most important thing.

I made a solo shopping trip to Las Vegas this "weekend" and visited, um, several Starbucks locations to collect used grounds. It looks like a lot, I know, but it just disappears once it's in the garden, I swear! My soil has its pluses -- hardly any rocks -- but also minuses -- not much organic matter. The coffee grounds are really upping the organic, water-holding content.

So that coffee got split between two beds, one of which I had done nothing to yet, and the other one has significant amounts of cow manure, grass clippings, and some coffee grounds already. This somewhat prepared one got a good topping of coffee grounds. Looks like a lot, right? Darcy, as you can see, LOVES the coffee grounds. She likes to crumble the individual discs. It makes her coffee-covered from head to toe, but she's washable.

But after five minutes of turning the soil over, you can hardly tell it had that many coffee grounds earlier. It's the one in the middle. The whole garden is smallish -- about 11 by 14 feet in total, but it's a good start and I have modest hopes for production this year: greens, herbs, tomatoes, snap peas, and maybe some hot peppers and/or cucumbers.

Flower Season Begins!

Welcome to Flower Season 2009! Darcy and I hiked from the post office back to our house the other day and our rewards were a fox or coyote jaw complete with teeth and a little fur on the chinny-chinny-chin and the first flowers of spring! These purple lovelies are a carrot family member called purple cymopterus. Apparently, there's no common name for them. There are two plants hanging out together, but I can't find more, even though I've tried.

Darcy and Michael took their own hike a week ago to the "Quiet Canyon" (Darcy's name), aka Banshee Canyon (the name that appears on maps). This is the land of holes in rocks and the place where the echoes live, so Darcy loves it. Anywhere she can play with rocks and dirt is a good place for her.

Stay tuned for more spring pictures of Darcy exploring the Mojave and flowers popping up everywhere!

Flowers, Everywhere We Look, Flowers

Ok, so there has been some prodding recently for some new photos and an update. We've been silent because we spend all our free time (well, I do, Michael sometimes thinks it's more of the stuff he does at work) looking at flowers. And hosting guests and doing some traveling, I should add, but flowers really have taken over our lives (and our hard drive).

So here are some lovely flowers. (Clicking on a picture gets you a larger image.)



Michael received an email a few weeks back saying that Devil's Playground was in a once in a lifetime state of bloom. We were lucky enough to get out there a few days later -- it was breathtaking! Dune evening primroses as far as the eye could see in all directions, with lots of prickly poppies, sunflower-family yellow flowers, hairy sand verbena, desert needles, and so many other flowers mixed in. The primroses, however, were the stars of this show, flowering in enormous mounds and double rings (top photo).


After a lot of driving (we might have bitten off a little more than we should have) we stopped for a picnic lunch at some well-known (to us) rocks. Darcy is all smiles because she's eating her very first PB and J. She also loves rocks, so was happy even before she discovered the glorious presence of jelly.

The flower season moves from lower to higher elevations here, and different flowers show up in the varied ecosystems that make up the Preserve. The following pictures are of the yucca and cactus family blooms, which are spectacular.

Joshua Trees in bloom

Up close and personal with a banana yucca

Beavertail cactus on Zyzzyx road

Claret cup cactus among the Joshua trees

Darcy will do anything for some more flower sightings...her first solo* rock climb.

And she's rewarded! With cliff roses, Palmer's penstemon, and rattlesnake weed (in that order). The rattlesnake weed fooled us -- it looks huge in the pictures in the guidebooks; we were expecting something ten times that size at least!




All that flower hunting and rock climbing and walking does wear a girl out, though. Even the coolest shades in the world can't keep this one awake...

*Solo as in, Daddy's hand is just out of the picture by an inch. Don't call child protective services just yet!

Flowers! Flowers! Flowers!

Coming into Baker on Interstate 15 now means passing through corridors of yellow flowers. What are they? Various species of sunflower and daisy relatives, mostly. But off the highway, there are more colors...
Lots of purples and whites abound in and around Mojave National Preserve. We had abundant rains over the winter, continuing into this spring, and the desert is coming to life. This is just one of many places with fields of interspersed hairy sand verbena (the lavender), dune evening primrose (the large white), and brown-eyed primrose.

The dune evening primrose merits a picture all by itself. This photo was taken just outside the Preserve boundaries.

I really love all the small flowers that are appearing. These brilliant purple ones are called, appropriately enough, purple mat. I don't know what the small succulents are. They don't appear in our flower guide; we have a list of almost a dozen now that aren't, so it's time to look for a better guide! The flowers on the purple mat are a little smaller than a dime.

These beauties are lilac sunbonnets. They are tiny, spiny, and low to the ground. They're not all that easy to spot, but it's hard to turn away once you've found them. I'll share more flower photos over the next month or so. I'm hoping that the Joshua tree bloom will be spectacular once it starts. Maybe even more than that, though, I'm excited for the cactus blossoms if and when they arrive.