First Day of Spring 2014!

Today we welcome in spring! So let us celebrate the day with photos featuring signs of spring, shall we? Ready to head out?

Glory in yellow!

The center of a camellia

Lupine in the spring

Cherry blossoms

A peach blossom

Shades of tangerine

And one final photo!

A nectarine blossom

Enjoy your day, and take a step outside to appreciate the beauty of this day! Thank you for stopping by today! Have a terrific Thursday!

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Bark With Me!

One of the things that I love looking at are the different textures and patterns that one can find in bark. The other day, out and about with the camera, I discovered a frog, crickets, mushrooms and the following: Some amazing looking colors and textures in bark! Ready to bark with me?

Here is a shot of the bark sapping on a grey pine. The branch that was here was cut in the fall. To me, this looks like it’s wearing a broach! My mom would have loved to wear something this pretty!

Sapping

I loved the texture and cracking on this bark! The sprouting green adds a lovely contrast!

Hazelnut bark

As the grey pine grows the bark expands exposing these lovely colors!

Grey pine bark

The colors in the Madrone trees is one of my favorite barks here in the Sierra Foothills. It has such lovely contrasts!

Madrone bark

One final shot…This is the bark on one of our oaks. I liked the way the bark cracks along this knot in the tree!

Knot for me!

Well, we made it to Wednesday! Enjoy your day and as always, thank you for taking the time to stop by!

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Camouflage Means Survival

Survival here in the Sierra Foothills means that you need to blend in so that you will not be noticed. Not for us humans, but for the critters that make their home here next to us. When I was out and about in the backyard, I saw something flitting through the air and when it settled I was having a hard time discovering what it was. Then I saw one of these things move and caught where it landed! What is it? Well, let’s see if you can find what is in this photo!

Do you see what I discovered?

Let’s take another look!

Great camouflage

There were many of these around me but they are very hard to see!

Here’s another one!

What caught my eye was they way this little guy was flipping his wings!

Fluttering his wings

Want to check out one of the lovely faces on this cricket?

Up close

Pretty cool – huh? I think so and hope that you do too!

Well, have a great Tuesday, and thanks for taking the time today to drop by!

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Spring Mushrooms!

Venturing outside with camera in hand, I went in search of photo opportunities. Sometimes you have to look closely to see what it is that is hiding in plain sight. I poked around for quite a bit and then something caught my eye. So I had to take a closer look. I was rewarded by the discovery of mushrooms! And guess what? They turned out to be in a number of places in my yard!

Now I do not know the names of any of these, and did look to see what I could find, but misidentifying a mushroom can be deadly! So shall we take a look at what I discovered? Well, then let’s go!

Here is one of the first ones that I found. Now you tell me, isn’t this glorious?

One lovely mushroom

Moving on a bit further in the yard I found these little gems. Each one of these is about the size of a nickel.

Casting shadows

When I headed over to a woodpile of old oak, I found this little winky mushroom popping up between the bark and the surface of the wood underneath. Check out the stem on this baby.

Growing on dry old oak

When I got around some of the oaks in the back I spied this bright orange color. Here is what I saw.

This caught my eye

As I poked around I realized that this too was a mushroom! Then I noticed clusters all over the place. Here is a shot of one of the tiny clusters that I found.

Then I found a cluster of mushrooms

Here is another mushroom I found underneath the oaks. This was in a nice shady area, and there were many. What was intriguing was the way they popped up from under the leaf litter that covers the ground around the oaks. You will see the debris on this mushroom…

Popping up from under the oak leaf debris

I returned back to the house to review the photos for this post, and when my husband and I went out to our screened in patio room to enjoy our evening cocktail, I saw what I thought was a huge bug on the deck. Another photo op is what I thought, and one of a bug! I went out the door for a closer look and discovered this mushroom popping up between the boards of our decking!

On deck

Amazing isn’t it? If you are out in the wild and you see wild mushrooms, unless you are an expert, do not pick mushrooms and eat them!

Enjoy your Monday, and many thanks for dropping by to visit today!

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Camellia Blossoms

Did you know that the camellia leaves are used for making tea? It is the camellia sinensis that is used for tea! Other varieties of camellias are also used to make a sweet seasoning or a cooking oil! They make the oil by squeezing the seeds. And another form of camellia oil is used for cleaning the blades of cutting instruments. And, this plant can be found in a number gardens. Today I wanted to share photos from one of our camellias in our garden that is blooming for the first time!

One lovely camellia!

Pretty isn’t it?

Too bad these flowers have little to no fragrance!

Too bad they have no fragrance!

This blossom is so heavy that it is laying on the ground!

A heavy blossom on the ground

The camellia is the state flower of Alabama.  Sacramento, just west of us here in the foothills, nickname is Camellia City!  White camellias in New Zealand symbolized the women’s right to vote and it is also featured on their 10 dollar note. And Coco Chanel used the camellia bud for the symbol of her haute couture. The best part for us here in the Sierra Foothills is that these plants are deer resistant! Wahoo!

Well I hope that you enjoyed today’s visit with the first blooms ever on this camellia shrub! Go out and have a terrific Tuesday, and see you tomorrow? I hope so!

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On the Rosemary…

Venturing outside, what seemed early in the morning but was not due to the time change, I went to our hillside where I have creeping rosemary growing. The sound: The same as at the willows with all the bees! So today, I share with you my dear readers, the few photos that came out of the lovely little pollinators in my yard…

Check out the eyes on this visitor! Click on the photo twice to enlarge this one…Can you see the detail in his eyes?

A visitor to the rosemary

Then I spied a baby bumble bee…Check this little guy out!

A baby bumble bee

Now for a few bee photos…

Harvesting

Landing

Tucking in

It is another Monday and one deemed to be magnificent! Hugs to you for taking the time to drop in, and I hope that your day is spectacular!

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Shades of Daffodils!

Daffodils are one of the few spring bulbs that the deer will not munch. I read about this after we moved here and heard about it from the neighbors too. So I got busy planting some lovely daff’s! I planted about 300! Not all at once mind you but over a period of three years. The hope is that they naturalize in the garden. With all the different varieties that I have, they do not all come up at once, which is really great because we have color popping all over the yard as others fade. So, for today I thought that I would share with you a few of the macro shots that I took recently!

Eggs and cream

Delicate

Dripping sugar

Starburst

Brilliant

Reaching out

Aren’t they pretty? Some of these have a gentle sweet fragrance that can fill up a room! I do have a couple of tulips, and they are just sprouting. These are surrounded by daff’s which seems to keep the deer away from these tasty morsels!

Thank you for the visit today! Have an amazing Thursday and if you are in my neck of the woods stay dry and be safe on the roads! 🙂

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Early Almond Blossoms!

After rain overnight, I just had to venture out into the orchard to take photos of the lovely almond blossoms therein. Yes, my tree is almost in full bloom which is very early for the season. This is due to above normal temperatures for this time of year. So come along with me to see the lovely blossoms…ready?

Nature’s work of art

Pretty, aren’t they?

I got lucky with this next shot. Check out one of the local pollinators!

In flight

I just love the pink centers!

Sunbathing

This one resembles a star!

A shining star

This bunch still has water clinging to it from last nights rain!

Drops of rain

One final photo. Such a lovely cluster, don’t you think?

One lovely cluster

I noticed while I was snapping photos that one of my nectarine trees and one of the branches on my 5 in 1 plum are pushing blossoms. Stay tuned for upcoming photos of those beauties!

May you have a magnificent Monday, and thank you for dropping in!

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Old Man of the Andes

Today this post is about two amazing cactus that I am growing. The cactus is called Old Man of the Andes. And, there is a story about how I ended up with this cactus!

The old man

It was 2001 and I was living in an apartment complex in a corner unit on the 5th floor. Who would think living on the 5th floor of a building that one would have issues with squirrels? Well, I did! I had a huge deck on which I had a variety of lovely flowering plants. It was a cheery place to sit. I came home one day, shortly after having moved in, only to discover that something had been on my deck and uprooted all of my plants! It looked like a war zone what with plants laying on the decking and holes in the soil where the plants used to be.

I cleaned it all up, re-potted everything, and sat to have an evening cocktail when I spied a squirrel on my deck. He started digging everything up again! This was the beginning of my ongoing battle! I quickly chased him off.

The next day, I headed to the nursery to find something to deter this squirrel, who I named G.I. Joe due to the war zone he left behind. I left there with a spray bottle of fox urine. This was guaranteed to keep this critter away! Well, G.I. Joe was not deterred by the fox urine. After all, he probably figured out that fox do not live on decks five floors up!

The battle raged on! My next plan of attack was cayenne pepper. Figuring a good whiff of this up his nose would bother him, or so I was told, one morning before going to work I liberally spread cayenne around all my plants. I was satisfied that this would do it! When I returned home that night I checked the deck only to find plants scattered once again all over my deck.

My next plan of attack was to place very spiny cactus on the deck railing. This is when I bought the Old Man of the Andes. The spines on this plant are long and sharp!

The spines up close

I placed these cactus, in separate pots back then, on either end of the railing. And, I sprayed them with fox urine and scattered more cayenne pepper around these plants. They seemed to work, until several days later when sitting in my living room I noticed the squirrel crawling on the wall right around the cactus!

Needless to say, I gave up on having nice plants on my deck, but I did end up with these wonderful cactus. These two are now 12 years old!

My lovely pair

These plants originate from the Andes Mountains. They can take the cold and the heat, which is one of the reasons they do well here in the Sierra Foothills. While they look hairy, those hairs are really another type of spine that protects the plant from the cold and the heat!

One hairy dude

Well, I hope that you enjoyed the story! Thanks for stopping by today and go out and have a terrific Tuesday!

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Almond Harvest!

You might remember that I recently posted a photo of the hulls on the almonds on my single tree as they started to split. This post is about the process that I discovered I need to do with an almond harvest! A huge thanks goes out to the AG school in our area: U.C. Davis!

To remind you, here is a photo of the tree as the almonds were ripening and starting to split the hulls…

Husks are splitting

I went out to my tree last weekend, and thought to myself, “Self, we should pick these now. The squirrels have not gotten to them yet!” Boy was I right! Just an FYI: You need to start harvesting nuts when 75% of the tree have hulls that are split.

The U.C. Davis document I discovered was how to harvest nut fruits. If you have questions, you can get to their site with the information on this by clicking Harvesting and Storing Your Home Orchard’s Nut Crop. This article is chock full of information.

So, I had pulled all these almonds off the tree, hulls and all, by either shaking the tree, knocking on the trunk, or just releasing the nut from where it was. Here is what I took from the tree. Notice the difference from the first photo…

Just off the tree

I let them sit overnight, and then looked for what to do next, which is when I found the link to the U.C. Davis document on harvesting nuts in your home orchard. The first thing that this let me know to do was to immediately remove the hulls. I ran into the kitchen and what I thought amount to about 30 almonds turned out to be about 65! Not bad for a first crop from a 5 year old tree! So, I hulled, and hulled and hulled!

Hulled almonds

The next step was to lay the almonds on a screen or another flat surface to dry. Even after coming off the tree, they are just not ready! I did not know that, and we even tried one that tasted pretty good. Drop the number now down 64 almonds. What I did next was take a piece of parchment paper, which I placed on a cookie sheet, and then scattered the nuts in a single layer.

The suggestion from U.C. Davis is to continually move the nuts around to ensure even drying.

Drying the almonds

I stirred the nuts for 4 days, and then I bagged them and tossed them into the freezer. The U.C. Davis site indicates that this will kill off any egg larvae that might be inside the nut meat. And, I can store them in the freezer for up to 2 years! While they will not last this long, if you grow your own, you can store them at room temperature for up to eight months after they come out of the freezer!

Here is what they look like today before going into the freezer for a few days…We do, after all, want to eat them!

Dried almonds

Have you ever harvested a nut? I would love for you to share your story with me! Please do comment with your story!

And, thank you for stopping by for a spell today! I appreciate it and I hope that you have enjoyed your time on my site! Have a fantastic Friday!

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