It means… actually, it doesn’t mean a damn thing, because I haven’t done a weekly topic on Thursdays since, oh, 2021, but I like the idea of new people coming here and thinking they’re missing out. Well, sure, of course they are, if they’re new, but even more so than they really are. All this presumes that new people are actually coming here, and this whole paragraph isn’t solely for the benefit of one person or fewer…
That said, while lamenting that I have a backlog, I’m also doing a shitty job of getting to them, and this week has been no exception. I have two videos to edit together, but before that, I decided to catalog the clips so it’s easier to find them, and that takes longer than expected, even longer when you obtain more clips before you’re done. And get into editing another video, one that won’t appear here. And refit the hotend of the 3D printer, so you can finish the repair of the clock that you decided to tackle. And run around several different places picking up stuff for even more projects.
So with all that, a faint theme as I get something up here, and that theme is, ‘Flowering.’
Way back on February 3rd, I got this pic of the potted Japanese maple in the greenhouse getting its early start on leafing out, showing the red-edged leaves that indicate they’re brand new. These were quite small, and I regret now not getting something for scale. Because in the interim, the tree continued apace and has since been moved out of the greenhouse and is developing its thick full canopy already.
Last year, we believe we left it in the greenhouse a little too long, and it got heat-shocked and never quite looked healthy all summer long, so we moved it out on the first of this month and it’s been kicking it nicely, despite the fact that we’re having another cold snap and the nights are dropping to near-freezing. All of the Japanese maples that we transplanted into the yard last fall are leafing out enthusiastically, though not anywhere near as far as this one, and even the ginkgo that faltered in the front yard and got transplanted to the shadier back is taking hold this spring. So it’s all looking good so far.
Especially happy has been the almond tree, which flowered and began leafing out almost simultaneously.
On the morning after a heavy overnight rain, I got out after the sun had risen a little higher and snagged some of the almond flowers, because it doesn’t appear I can pass up wet blossoms, and someone can go have a field day with that sentence. In years past, I’ve remarked about seeing the first flowers on this tree, three of them(!), and this year it was literally too many to count. It’s happy here.
Then, when sorting, I played around with one of the other frames with a tight crop.
And unable to leave that one alone, I then shifted to monochrome.
One of my upcoming Tip Jar posts (see, there are things you’re missing,) will go into this in detail, but this was another example of channel-clipping, solely the Blue channel this time, which caused the yellow pollen to go dark, and we all know why.
Those same rain conditions produced an abstract on one of the not-leafing-out-yet-then Japanese maples, the big one:
I intentionally tried to get the focus on the image seen through the raindrop, though no green was showing on the landscape at that time so it’s a bit stark. Let’s see, this was taken ten days ago, and in the interim (probably with some thanks to this very rain,) this tree started leafing out as well – the hint of it is right there in the pic.
Later that evening, it was unseasonably warm overnight and the anoles were taking note.
This is another Japanese maple (the thing with the red things,) serving as the vertical bed of an apparently cranky Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) though really, the anole was only vaguely aware that I was there. The anoles had wasted absolutely no time in doing their warm-night-perch-on-plants thing, and The Girlfriend and I counted over twenty one of these nights before giving up. Like I said, it went cold again and they stopped this for the time being, but we were surprised at how quickly they took advantage of it.
Back indoors now, I noticed that the flowers on the lavender plant that The Girlfriend had obtained looked a little funky, and this was because they were producing nectar, I believe. So I had to get pics of that, too.
Lavender is a popular cultivar, and as such it has a million varieties and subspecies, so the best I can say is Lavandula – which is a great phrase to keep handy when you have no response to something your weird friend says. These spikes are somewhere around 30-40mm in length to give you an idea, and you can see the faint hint of what I saw here, but we can go in closer of course.
I’m taking this to be nectar, anyway, and the golden hue might simply be because they’re emanating from yellow flowers behind them – I admit to not gathering a sample with a syringe and putting it on a slide for a closer look. Slack, I know, but I said I’ve been getting sidetracked in far too many ways, so give me credit for resisting this one, okay?
Actually, I didn’t think about it until typing this up just now, or I probably would’ve. But no! Focus! Focus!
[And get to the other task that popped up while I was typing this. And then focus!]