Category Archives: Flowers

It’s early August, the height of summer, pushing triple digits every day. The maple tree in the front yard is glorious and full and green.

Except…

There’s one single stinking leaf that has to get out of the gates early, clearly “offsides,” jumping the gun and showing off at least two months early.

“Look at me! Look at me! I’m a rouge, renegade, crimson red maple leaf in SoCal, where there shouldn’t be any maple trees to begin with!”

Give ’em Hell, Festus!

In late July I started to notice these flowers that were blooming like crazy on a short bush next to the pergola in the back yard.

I suspect it’s an annual thing, and while we might have moved in a year ago, I was so busy and frantic back then that the bush could have been burning and in a conversation with Moses and I might not have noticed it.

I’ll have to do some digging to see what it is, but it most certainly is spectacular right now!

Meanwhile, something that I know was happening last year is NOT this year. Even before we bought the house, when we were just looking at it as a possibility, I noticed there was an apple tree and a pear tree in the back. Both were heavily laden with fruit. The apples were small and the birds got most of them, but the pears were nice and I ate several.

This year? Nada. Nothing on either tree. Perhaps they needed to be watered more or fertilized in the spring or something. I’ll consult our gardener and get him on the case, but for now, I’ll have to get my pears the old fashioned way – in the produce aisle at the grocery store. Or maybe at the farmer’s market.

Edge of the Mesa – Part Four

Surrounding the dirt road on the way to the edge of the Mesa was stereotypical  high desert landscape – dirt, rock, sagebrush, tumbleweeds, yucca trees, brittlebrush, creosote, sage, palm trees…

For one thing, with this viewpoint being shifted to the west a bit from our house, instead of snow-covered Big Bear being hidden behind the Pinnacles, you can see it peeking around on the right. And the view down off of the Mesa into the Cajon Pass is gorgeous.

The Joshua trees are the big plants in the area, along with the shorter, bushier creosote plants. The Joshua trees are the symbol of Hesperia, and are federally protected. When we bought the Forever Home, part of the loan documents in escrow included something making sure that we knew that they’re protected, were familiar with the penalties for cutting one down, and swore an oath to Smokey Bear to protect them.

I think everything with the yellow flowers are brittlebrush. Everything’s blooming now that it’s spring. There’s also a nice selection of grasses here. A wet winter has done good things for the growing season.

I’m sure there are squirrels, rabbits, probably coyotes, and probably snakes & other unfriendlies out there. And I know, I know, snakes hold an important place in the ecosystem, blah, Blah, BLAH… I have good reasons for being terrified of snakes, particularly the venomous kind, so I stayed on the dirt road. If/when I need/want to go hiking out through this sort of landscape I’ll make sure I’m wearing hiking boots and long, thick pants.

In three months, this will almost all be brown, dry, and extremely flammable!

Last week I shared how the fruit trees in the back yard are starting to bud and blossom – the maple tree in front is also showing signs of spring growth.

Spring has always been my favorite season, in large part because of the explosion of bare branches into leaves and flowers.

Okay, having warmer weather, longer days, and my birthday doesn’t hurt spring’s odds in the grading.

All of these little helicopter-blade seed pods will soon go spinning off into the wind, looking for fertile ground to make new maple trees. Good luck with that! It’s nothing but sand, rock, mountains, tumbleweeds, lizards, and rattlesnakes for hundreds of miles in any direction. But I love the optimism!

Yesterday I had pre-vacation pictures of the first flower buds starting to pop out on the pear tree. Today I went out to see how things progressed while we were gone.

The bees have found the flowers as well.

Bees are good. Every little bit we can do to help them along is a plus.

The apple tree has started to leaf out as well.

No flowers, but plenty of leaves, tons of buds…

…and a fair number of those tiny, little, black bugs down deep in the leaves. Aphids? Who knows.

Just before we left for Arizona last Wednesday, five days ago, I went out back to fill the bird feeders and I took a peek at the fruit trees. The apple tree looked like it wanted to be budding and leafing, but didn’t have anything green or flowery popping out yet. But the pear tree…

Not much, but it’s still a winner!

Bring on the buds and flowers and bees and pears! I can’t wait for more uber fresh fruit in the fall.

I haven’t been out there yet since we’ve been back, but I’ll try to check tomorrow to see if the apple tree has gotten the hint.

It’s gotten warm for a few days and we see trees starting to bud and flower all over town. Nothing yet from the pear and apple trees in our back yard (I’m keeping an eye on them!) but in just 48 hours or so the neighbor’s trees along the street have gone from bare to an explosion of pink flowers.

They’re gorgeous! Two separate plant-ID apps on my phone identify these as “Cherry-Plum” flowers. Okay!

It’s also great to see a ton of bees all over all of the flowers.

As long as they’re not building a nest in the walls at our house, the bees and I can be good neighbors!

No scent detected while I was taking these pictures, but then again, with all of the bees I wasn’t trying to get my face in there too close.

I remember a grade school joke about a kid failing a spelling test because he spelled that common red flower as “brose.” The teacher says, “There’s no ‘b’ in ‘rose.'” The kid says, “There was in the one I was sniffing!”

Up along Maple Street, where we go to the grocery store on Main, there’s a line of what I believe to be apple trees, that are covered in very similar white blossoms. They exploded into flowers over the last week as well.

Decent rain over the winter, warming up with lots of Sun now, spring is announcing its presence with authority in the High Desert!