Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Spring Flowers

Yes, it is Spring here in Northern California.  The beginning of Spring at least.  I wandered out into my back yard to take a look at a few things and found beautiful white blooms on my pluot trees.  This exquisite find encouraged me to gather my camera and take a few shots of the first Spring flowers.

Some of the many beautiful flowers I found in my back yard were pink nectarine flowers:




And many lovely blooms on the magnolia tree:




The under rated calendula flower.  A medicinal herb we should all have in our back yard.  The plant has amazing healing power for your skin and will self seed, reproducing the lovely flowers in your garden year after year.


Pluot, pluot and more pluot blooms.  My first blooming fruit tree of the season, always ready to announce Spring well before the other trees.



 

And the lovely camelia, always blooming long and early.  A wonderful evergreen bush with amazing flowers. I often have my first camelia blooms in January, but they last through June.  I love these flowers.




My final shots were a of a little purple plant.  I don't know what this plant it is, but it lights up the garden in little blue and green shoots in early Spring.  Please leave a note if you know what kind of plant this is.




All the while I wander about the yard taking photos my children are building heffalump traps and the chickens are as chatty as ever.




So we enjoy our Spring, spending as much time as possible outside.   Enjoying our flowers that will soon become fruit and the flowers that are only there to look pretty.   Building traps, watching chickens and beginning to unravel the puzzle that is the vegetable garden every year.  We know that soon Summer will be sneaking in, to both our enjoyment and our wonder.  So for now we enjoy our Spring.