Spring is springing!

Spring is really starting to show its colors in my California Natives garden bed. (Photo taken just before the rain started.) In the background you can see the flowers of our local form of Sticky Monkeyflower. To the right you can see the flowers of the Penstemon 'Margarita BOP.' And, if you look really-really closely, you can just about make out a few inflorescences of Hearst's Ceanothus (center front). 

You can't really see it here, but the Goldfields and Tidy Tips are budding up quite nicely. (One Goldfields flower was partially open yesterday afternoon.  Woohoo!) In the mid-ground, in front of the monkeyflower, you can see mounds of Lupine leaves. No buds yet, but lots of leaves.

I'm really enjoying the mix of greens in that bed: blue-greens, gray-greens, yellow-greens, dark greens, Kelly-greens, and, at the other end, some red-greens! Then there are the leaf shapes and textures. There are smooth and crinkly, fuzzy and shiny, skinny and heart-shaped.

All blurry in the right foreground are the leaves of the Western Redbud. It didn't bloom this year, but it has *just* hit its 1-year anniversary in the ground.  Maybe next year.

I mentioned in my previous post that the Hooded Orioles are back. The males (one breeding adult and one juvenile, as far as I can tell) are not cooperating with me with respect to photographs, but the females are doing better. I think the bottom photo is the breeding female and the top one the juvenile female.

Today we are experiencing some much-needed April Showers and the weather is supposed to continue damp and/or skanky for the rest of the week. It should help prolong the spring blooming season. Woohoo!

But, for now, it's nice just sitting here, listening to the rain on the roof.