This is the 30th post beginning with “More” – just so you can keep track. You never should have lost count in the first place.
But as I said in the previous post, there are more signs that spring has arrived, and I present a few. Plus some extras – that’s called a “loss leader,” to rope you in.
We must start off with the first open blossom on the almond tree, the one self-started from a discarded almond in the compost pile twelve years ago. Last year it did better than ever before, but that was because I started using the deer repellent spray well before there was anything for the deer to munch on; it seems that their periodic browsing was stunting the growth of new branches, so when they never got the chance to clip off the new buds, the tree did several times better. Last year we even had almonds developing, though something stripped them from the tree before they were ripe – likely a squirrel. It would probably fare a lot better if it were far more than a meter or so in height, but we’ll see how it goes this year.
Neither of the next two are really signs of spring, any more than the daffodils, but we’re including them to be perverse.
These are the flowers of a rosemary bush, and they’ll appear sporadically at different times of the year, but I think we’ve been able to see some (among the three bushes we have) all winter long. Two of the bushes are showing rather large dying patches while the rest of them thrives, and we’re not sure what this is, but there has been no changes of conditions that we’re aware of. It might be due to mole damage of the roots, or it might be a blight of some kind; when we first moved here and tried to establish new rosemary plants to replace the huge one that we’d had to leave behind, there were none to be found anywhere, something apparently killing off the new plants even in nurseries. So we’re just keeping an eye on them right now, not sure that there’s anything that could be done regardless. There remain plenty of healthy branches to use for any cooking that we’re doing.
These are the flower clusters of a paperbush (Edgeworthia chrysantha,) and they break out even earlier than daffodils, being a late winter bloomer – these have been around for a few weeks now, but appear to be peaking right now. They always face downwards, so this perspective required lying on my back to shoot directly upwards against the sky. Don’t ask me how they pollinate.
But speaking of pollination…
As we determined last year, the lime trees that The Girlfriend had obtained in the spring really were Key lime (Citrus × aurantiifolia,) and they produced just enough fruit last year to make an excellent pie; this is one of the two budding out madly in the greenhouse. It’s not quite warm enough yet to feel comfortable moving them out, but maybe within the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I’m liable to be pollinating these myself while they’re in there, which worked amazingly well for the lemon trees last year. They’re dripping wet because we’d had a horrific hatching of aphids in there, and I’d just blasted them off with a strong water spray, prior to treating the leaves and buds with something that may repel the aphids. If even half of these germinate, we’re gonna have a shitload of limes.
The trees had grown so well last year, in fact, that after starting from something not half a meter tall, they’d grown well over two by the time we had to put them into the greenhouse for the winter. Since the greenhouse is slightly less than two meters at the tallest, this meant a little trimming was in order, and the lime trees told me what they thought about that:
You can see the pruned ends, and the myriad new branches sprouting out beneath them – like the flowers above, this is far from the only example too. They appear quite happy with the greenhouse, but not nearly as happy as the avocado trees. One of those was begun on the deck last year but has doubled its size since moving into the greenhouse, while three others started indoors in a window plant rack and were moved to the greenhouse when they were getting too tall for the rack. The first has leaves that are close to 25cm in length.
And finally,
I spotted this Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) on the wall but it scampered for cover, though after a short while it had climbed atop this telephone junction box to bask, and allowed me a much closer approach. Curiously, this is within a meter or two of the regular haunt of the other that we’ve seen already, which was initially found at the same time today – that’s pretty close proximity for aggressively territorial reptiles, so I’m surmising that they’re opposite sexes. No sign yet of my fork-tailed buddy from last year (who might be the same one from that video in the previous link,) but it’s still early yet.
So while it’s not safe to consider spring firmly established, things to photograph are starting to show up, and we can be pleased with that. They’ll appear here soon after, um, they appear here – you know what I mean.