Sprung

The season of chocolate bunnies and enthusiastic flowering shrubs is on us and mrpeenee is reveling in  and suffering through it in about equal parts.

Reveling because this is the time of year when all the hard work I've put in to my yard over the years pays off.

Here my favorite flowering plant ever, a California native called ceanothus, or California Lilac.  Photos never do justice to its electric, sapphire blue.  It blooms with flowers so dense you can't see the leaves.  The bees dig it, too.

Also, further up in a sort of inaccessible spot, two charming imports from Australia, Leptospermum, or tea tree (but not the tea tree that they get oil from.   Botany is so darn confusing) hold down the fort.  The bigger one is a fabulous rose red and the smaller one has flowers that look white from the distance, but up closer reveal their pale, pale pink throats.

You can see in this picture the patch in the back of the garden I rescued from the invading blackberry vines and acacia.  Considering how it took me weeks to hack them back and resulted in several various ouchies in the process. seeing how teensy the new open space is pretty discouraging, but I'll take what I can get.  I've planted it out in wildflower seeds; I hope July wil see a blaze of poppies and cornflowers and whatnot up there.

Suffering comes in because as much as I love this time of year, my sinuses hate it.  I have been slowly drowning for two weeks in my own mucus and all I ask for is a burial at sea where, hopefully, the fucking pollen will not be able to find me.