For Earth Day, bees on the elderberry and the avocado.
Native Garden
This HUGE bumble bee really wants the Toyon flowers to open up! Been buzzing around for several minutes.
Today’s Clarkias and Poppies.
First bloom of our backyard California wild roses (Rosa Californica)!
Snakefly hunting insects on a bed of elderberry flowers.
Yarrow is now in bloom and the carpet beetles are gorging themselves on pollen.
Seen at lunch: iNaturalist guesses this is a Leafhopper Assassin bug on our California grape. Assassins in our back yard! A good bug!
The swarm in our little blue oak is getting a new home.
When your yards are a pollen and nectar paradise, this can happen. Time to get in touch with a local apiary!
Bee butt on a front yard Gilia 🐝
First elderberry flowers in the backyard.
🐞
Newly emerged ladybug 🐞
Future native California grapes.🐞🐝
Front yard (mostly) native garden update.
What do you need this morning? Bee butt on Gilia flowers and Baby Blue Eyes.
This morning’s view out the backyard window. The California Lilacs (purple!) are out of control. Mandarin in the foreground. Elderberry to the far left.
A successful section of our vegetative fence line screen. Elderberry (Sambucus mexicana), California Lilac (Ceanothus), and a Mandarin tree. A few years in the making.
European honeybee on a California Lilac (Ceanothus). 🐝
Our front yarden sage plants (first two photos) and all the Ceanothus are now flowering.
2020 Spring: Blooms to Come
Friday, February 28, 2020
Here in the Northern Sacramento Valley of California, the blooming seems to be happening all at once with the unusually dry and warm late winter. Apricot is about to start blooming: The cherry will be blooming soon too: Western Red Bud (Cercis occidentalis) is about to bloom: California lilacs (Ceanothus ) “Ray Hartman” are about to bloom:
And here’s a California gilia.
First front yard California poppy bloom of the year.
Bees seem to never **rest** when manzanitas are blooming. I gave up trying to photograph them.
Mid-February 2020 Update: Home Orchard and Native Plants
Friday, February 14, 2020
It has been 19 days since it last rained here. The outdoor temperatures have been in the mid-70s. The area’s almond orchards are blooming in waves about a week earlier than last year. Our deciduous plants are waking up! We planted a nectarine this winter and it is beginning to grow. Our California Roses, which are in the same family as nectarines — Rosaceae — are also beginning to grow back.
The California native plant garden is very green right now and soon there will be plenty of flowers. The blue oak will wake up near end of February.
Wildlife scaring and killing outdoor cats like to hide under our native ceanothus. I regularly scare them out in hopes they’ll eventually stay away from that unpleasantness.
No sight distance through the evergreen toyon. It’s very happy. So is our manzanita — getting ready to flower. 🐝🌳
Frosty morning in the yarden 🐝
Cut down this years’ California fuchsias yesterday to encourage & release a new year of growth.
