Early Spring Garden

 

So far March has been pretty warm in my corner of the world. The last couple days temperatures were hovering around 90F (32C) which is way too hot for this time of year and for me - I prefer the lower to mid 70s (21-25C). Everything is early in the garden and I almost can't catch up with all the weeding I still have to do.

The Calendulas have reseeded and are simply beautiful. I planted them years ago because they remind me of home - they were early bloomers there as well. They readily reseed and have spread quite a bit over the years. They are a wonderful pop of cheerful color during the gray days of winter. They first started to bloom in January just like the camellia in the top photo.

African Cape Daisies are early bloomers as well. My California Poppies are usually later than some of their cousins in the neighborhood, but now I see more and more of their orange flowers in the garden. There will be more coming. They always make me smile.

A few years ago the Photinia died and we eventually took the trunk out, but left it lying on the ground. But one part had survived and has been growing strongly since last year. In early spring the new leaves have a stunning red color.

Since it was so hot the past couple days, the French Lilac is now past its prime. But it was beautiful while it lasted. During the night the delicious fragrance was wafting through the open window into our bedroom - bliss. The Pipevine Swallowtail enjoyed the blossoms.

Pacific Bleeding Heart - native to California - prefers shady spots. It seems to be very happy here since it has spread considerably since I planted the first one a few years ago. Don't they have the sweetest "faces"?

I was VERY excited when this native lupine showed its first blossom (left photo) because I wasn't at all certain that it would come back again. A couple days later it looked like in the right hand photo.

Today it looks like this:

My phone's photo program has an AI option and just for fun I played with it a little bit. I particularly like the watercolor option. It turned one of the lupine pictures into this:

The Mourning Doves are daily visitors. I wonder whether they will build a nest on our solar box again like they did the past two years.

The Desert Mallow has started to flower as well. I really like the soft salmon color of the flowers.

And the Western Fence Lizards are back, racing up and down the fence and soaking up the sun on the rocks.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I saw the first flower of Lauren's Grape Poppy, today there were two. I had bought them as tiny plants last year and they didn't keep very long, but at least they reseeded. This year the plants are much stronger.

I couldn't help it, I had to turn them into a watercolor photo as well.

I really like this.

Since I had so much fun with this, I took a photo from my "Cattitude" post and let it turn into a watercolor. It looks like there are a ton of flowers in my garden - which wasn't the case at the time when the photo was taken (and I'm not cross-eyed either!).

All these faces - human, animal and plant - are for Nicole's Friday Face Off. Come check it out!

Nett hier

 

Nett hier. Aber waren Sie schon mal in Baden-Württemberg? (Nice here. But have you ever been to Baden-Württemberg?)

This is a slogan from a 1999 marketing campaign by the advertising agency Scholz & Friends for the German state of Baden-Württemberg. Even though I was living at that time in Tübingen which is located in Baden-Württemberg, I was completely unaware of this campaign. I was busy with a toddler and my volunteer work at the crisis hotline.

Years later, the slogan has been printed on stickers - and they seem to appear everywhere. I first saw it in an Instagram post by my daughter. She had seen it in Gent, Belgium, in the summer of 2024. 

When we travelled later that year, we saw it as well.

In Hamburg...

Before I go on, I want to make something clear: I am not at all a fan of pasting stickers everywhere. Actually I find it quite hideous. However, seeing this sticker I couldn't help but feel a bit of local pride. Not of the sticker or the people who thought it necessary to stick it there, but because of the place it represents. Even though I had lived in four German states (Lower-Saxony, North Rine-Westphalia, Hesse, and Baden-Württemberg), slowly moving from the North to the Southwest, it is Baden-Württemberg that I call my home.

In Moab, Utah...

On a stop sign along Highway 12 in Utah (you almost can't see it)...

With all of these I was sort of okay with (well, not really, to be honest). It's not beautiful, but it's a sign of our time to leave our crap everywhere. I don't waste any grievance on that.

But what I came upon in Bryce Canyon was not okay at all.

Obviously someone had unsuccessfully tried to remove it. This is made to stick - and it is disgusting. No local pride was left here, just a very bad calling card.

Mount Bennett

 Almost exactly two years ago I wrote a short paragraph about this painting that I had started in the fall before and then put away because I wasn't happy with it and didn't know how to proceed. By then I had found it again and realized that it looks like Mount Bennett that I can see from my bedroom window. It is also rather typical what many areas in Sonoma County look like. Mount Bennett sits at the heart of Annadel State Park where I often hike.

This is an image of Mount Bennett that I took in February 2023, seen from one of the streets in my neighborhood. It is very rare that we see snow on it.

So last year I finally worked on the painting again and was eventually able to finish it in a way that I actually liked it. I added a few things that represent the county I call home.

Here are a few details.

Sonoma County is home to about 75 mountain lions and I often see their scat when I hike in Annadel. Of course I had to include one in this painting. The quails in the lower right corner are on a wine bottle foil. California Quails are our state bird and of course Sonoma County is in Wine Country. The texture I achieved by glueing down tissue paper and then going over it with a copper oil pastel.

Another wine bottle foil and some lichen I found on one of my hikes. Almost all our older trees have some lichen on their branches. The white area is supposed to be our low morning coastal fog. The orange dots you can see represent California poppies.

This wine bottle foil represents our native oaks. California has several native oaks including the majestic Coast Live Oak which is evergreen, Blue Oak and Valley Oak. And of course I had to include birds. Maybe they're Turkey Vultures, our clean up crew.

After this I started a big canvas with a similar theme, representing Sonoma County, but this time I'm adding photos and more items from nature. I'm still working on that "elephant", but if I ever finish it, you will get to see it. Today it's only the smaller version.

I'm sharing with Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.

A New Chair and Some Cattitude

 

Last week I bought a teal colored Adirondack chair. The Geek was so kind to assemble it for me. Kibeau is sitting in the back, pretending he isn't interested.

But look!

He ventures closer, still pretending he looks anywhere else but to the chair.

But finally he couldn't contain his curiosity. He decided to ... help.

However, just sitting on the back of the chair is not enough. Let's see whether we can get a bit more comfortable.

This helping business is so much fun! Let's just rest the eyes for a minute.

All this helping is really exhausting!

What? The chair is still not done? After all the help?

Finally...

Here I am enjoying my first cup of morning coffee - on the seventh day of March.

And the best thing about this chair? It comes with a wine glass holder!

Cat and human faces are for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

On the internet - I forgot where - I found another wonderful cattitude image that I don't want to keep from you. I can almost hear the cat "speak".

Walk with a Coyote

 

About a year ago I joined the Senior Saunters, a group that gets together once a month to walk (well, saunter) in one of our many regional parks. It's organized by Sonoma County Regional Parks and it's a free program. Our guide is Alexis, a young, energetic parks employee who clearly enjoys being with us "oldies" and who is a wonderful resource of knowledge about everything connected with our parks. The size of the group varies every time, but there is a core of people who always join in the saunters. We not only enjoy the environment where we walk, but we also have a lot of fun together.

Last week we met at the lake, but Alexis didn't want to walk around the lake but led us up the hill away from the lake. We stopped at the Discovery Center and enjoyed the view down to the lake. You almost can't see it!

We eventually arrived at this meadow with two vernal pools. This area is a bit of a "no man's land" since it's right on the border between the regional park and the adjacent state park. Employees of both parks take care of this area.

This morning Alexis spoke about newts. She did it with a lot of humour, which I like, and always has a matching story to tell. Then she took us to the vernal pools and told us to look for newt eggs and tiny newts. We were quite taken with this, discovered the eggs, saw some newts, until someone shouted "there's a coyote!".

No one was looking for newts anymore, everyone was mesmerized by this beautiful guy who wasn't afraid of us at all (we were a group of about 25). He - or she? - took his sweet time to cross the meadow to eventually disappear in the woods nearby.

What a wonderful encounter!

This certainly made my day.

We had a couple more great views of the lake. It looks so much bigger from up here.

We saw some beautiful mushrooms - I think these are Spring Fieldcap (Agrocybe praecox)

I was very excited to see the first wildflowers. Henderson's Shooting Star (Primula hendersonii) is enchanting.

I tried to figure out what kind of fungi had settled on this branch. I'm not sure, but to me some of them look like dried up Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor). 

A last view down to the lake before we entered the Discovery Center and finally said our goodbyes.