A Sunday Walk

Although with the new Daylight Savings Time schedule the sun seems to be up earlier, today it was hidden behind clouds until nearly noon. But I wanted to take a walk and get some pictures of the flowers in bloom around here. Above you can see Mt. Pilchuck with its covering of snow from the storms that came through last week.

It's been chilly, wet and windy, so some of the flowering things took a beating. These magnolias, for example, are for the most part, past their prime and show the impact of being thrown around in 40 mph gusts. But then I saw these lovely apple blossoms, the scent of which was almost overpowering as I walked past, and they are just coming into full bloom. We have a cherry tree nearby which is also about to flower.

My favorite harbinger of spring is the robin, and here he is (below), hop-hop-hoppin' along the grass, listening for the next meal. Right after I took this picture, a large cat began to sneak out from the bushes, watching for his next meal. Mr. Robin left for a safer lawn.

The robins were a featured event in my childhood when my father, my older brother, my younger brother and I would be eating breakfast in what was called a "nook" back in the 50's. It had a nice large window, but the view was hampered by the rhodendrons and the evergreen tree. Invariably my father would start out by remarking on "how delicious the bacon looks this morning." This would cause my older brother to ask me if I had seen the "white robin" outside the window next to where we were eating.

At first, being gullible, I would look outside and in that instant, my bacon would disappear. But experience is a great teacher, and gradually I would resist looking. More and more nefarious tricks were perpetrated to get me to weaken. The event I remember the most is when both my father AND my brother shouted, "Look, there it is - right there on tree limb!"

I succumbed - I looked, and to the man they agreed, "Oh, you just missed it!" and I also missed the bacon.

Now the sun is out and I want to plant something while it's dry enough and warm enough to be doing that. Where have you been walking recently? And have you seen the white robin?

Spring is sprung...

and the rest of the poem goes like this:

the grass is riz,

I wonder where the birdies is...

But I've actually seen a few of the birdies... a chickadee, some sparrows, a woodpecker. But I wonder if I'm just preoccupied or if the bird count is down, because there do not seem to be as many birds in the yard just now.

But the apple tree (see top and close up to the left) and the plum tree and the neighbor's magnolia are fairly screaming to be noticed. "Look at me! Look at me! Smell me!" they are all yelling at me when I go outside. And according to the various reports on pollen counts, it is the worst year ever recorded for pollen. But so far I'm not much affected by it. Jey-hu has had a miserable reaction, however - coughing, sneezing, sniffling, stuffy, etc.

He is ready to leave right now and return to Colombia where he never had any kind of reaction to their blooming things. And this coming from a Northwest native! He is stupified by his body's negative response to spring. I think the two and half months away just gave his body a chance to reconfigure - go figger!

Still, the bursting forth of new life is always such a hopeful sign and with all the peculiar activities on the national and global front, stopping and smelling the apple blossoms is comforting.