Friday open thread: flower report

[dolorosa_12]

I walked to the swimming pool this morning accompanied by a dawn chorus of birdsong: wood pigeons, sparrows, and blackbirds. When I emerged for the return journey, Ely was shrouded in misty rain, and the cathedral was disappearing into the sky.

Everywhere there are signs of spring.

Today's open thread is, quite simply: what are the flowers like where you are? Here, we've got cherry and plum blossom, daffodil bulbs emerging from the soil, flowering rosemary, and buds just starting to appear on one of the quince trees. Here's a photoset I put up on Instagram.

Please feel free to share photos or descriptions of your own floral scenery in the comments. For those of you in the southern hemisphere, flowers are probably going to be harder to come by, so instead: what is the plant life doing as things turn autumnal?

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

What a wonderful question! I love our brief floral spring here.

Wildflowers are brief and intense: monkeyflowers in hot colors, our own special sweet peas for that desert cottage garden, buttercups with that special sleek sheen, the shooting stars I love so much. And the tiny, ephemeral ones: teensy dot-flowered plantains and fringed linanthus and comb seeds about as big as my pinky. Some are going to stick around for a longer time: the ever-elegant western blue-eyed grasses, the various brodias, and the fragrant sages and deerweeds. The lemonade berries and britlebrushes and buckwheats seem to just go on forever. I can even forgive the invasives for a minute when they put out their blooms.

[dolorosa_12]

Oooh, what a beautiful collection of blooming flowers. I feel as if I can almost smell them through the screen.