Ethereal Beauty of Spring

I've been driving by this gorgeous tree in my neighborhood covered with blossoms day after day and I finally remembered to bring the camera with me today to get a photo of it. Too bad it wasn't sunny this morning. It's completely glorious with the morning sun shining on it. It looks like it's lit from within.

While I was taking the photos, a man I recognized from the neighborhood stopped on his bicycle to comment on this tree. He said he thinks it has retained its blossoms longer this year because the weather has been cooler. According to him, it has been in bloom for almost 2 months. Anyone know what kind of tree this is? Please leave a comment.

This huge ceanothus bush is growing around the corner from my house. I've been admiring it for years. When I walk by it in bloom, the fragrance is heady. It's always buzzing with bees. The common name is wild California lilac. But it doesn't smell anything like the lilacs back east, which I miss so much. The scent is sort of, well, wild.

In keeping with my vow to "go native" with my garden, I planted a couple of what I think is the same variety of ceanothus in my back yard. This one is called Julia Phelps. As you can see, mine have a LONG way to go to get to the size of my neighbor's ceanothus. It might help if I cleared out all the weeds surrounding them.

I made a trip to the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center Native Plant Nursery a couple of weeks ago. One word describes this place...funky! It's smack in the middle of the recycling center, and the place fairly reeks of stale beer and garbage and there are lots of flies buzzing around, along with those folks who steal the recycling from the bins in front of your house. They have a cat who looks like she weighs about 25 lbs., (no lie...check the link...there's a picture.) Greg, who runs it, is so into recycling, that he makes these plant markers out of old aluminum blinds. He's the only one who seems to know where things are there. Greg has a garden a few blocks from our house, which is either an amazing display of native plants, or the abomination of the neighborhood, depending on your point of view. Here are the plants I bought there, yet to be planted in the ground. (Awaiting removal of the aforementioned weeds.)

Speaking of natives, here are a few of my California poppies growing in the front yard. Steve thought that they had volunteered, but I planted seed.

Robins and Cedars and Jays...oh my!

Esther convinced me that it was much too nice a day outside not to take a post-lunch outing before heading back into the studio. All the outdoor furniture is coated with a light powdering of chartreuse pine pollen. We lounged in the backyard soaking up a few rays while robins and cedar waxwings zoomed around overhead. They travel in flocks this time of year feeding on berries. They were working the cotoneaster bushes next door. I love the cedar waxwing's thin, high pitched whistling call. A pair of scrub jays took a break from their insistent scolding to engage in some pair bonding. One jay joined another on the telephone wire and fed her some tasty tidbits. I've been worried about where they will nest this year since the guy up behind us had their favored nesting tree all hacked to s--- a few weeks ago. A few chipping yellow rumped warblers practiced aerial fly-catching. A lone red tailed hawk soared silently high above.

A shiny red ladybug gleaned the parsley while honeybees probed the periwinkle blue rosemary flowers for nectar. A large bumblebee buzzed lazily inches from Esther's face while she just gazed at it impassively. I notice that one of the foxgloves I planted in the fall has thrown up a flower spike that's already over a foot tall with pink buds. My new "strategy" of planting mostly Bay Area native plants is so far not working out so fabulously. The oxalis is threatening to choke out everything but this one plant which is supposed to be a Birdseye gilia. It's sprawling all over the place, making me suspect it might be something else. But my Julia Phelps ceanothus (wild lilac) bushes are covered in bluish purple buds. I love their subtle scent. (Too bad there aren't websites I can link to where you can sample the scent.)

While we no longer have our huge Monterey pines looming large in the upper level of our backyard, we now have a space where we can eventually put in a bench with a view over our roof of Mt. San Bruno and Montara Mountain beyond to the south and west to the sun glinting off the Pacific Ocean.

Spring is on the way

It continues to rain a lot here, but I have noticed that some of the small trees have recently burst into bloom. They're so beautiful. These are right down the street from me. The yellow flowers are oxalis, which is a horribly invasive weed from South Africa. I can't tell you how many tons of oxalis I have pulled from my yard over the years.

Last night I watched a DVD of a film called Helvetica. It's a documentary on the typeface Helvetica. I found it fascinating. The filmmakers travel to different cities around the world and show you many film clips of Helvetica being used in signage all around the city and then they interview a famous graphic designer. I was really thrilled to see Hermann Zapf (the Zapf font & dingbats designer), Michael Beirut of Pentagram and Stefan Sagmeister. I am still kicking myself because back in the 90s, Stefan Sagmeister called me for an illustration job and I said I couldn't take it because I was going out of town the next day. I didn't know who he was.