SPRING

[Opsa]

Is Spring springing in your part of the world? How can you tell?

[Bluenose]

Just for Ops...

[pieces o nine]

...is that lipstick on those pigfaces...


fx: rimshot

[Opsa]

Wow! Is that pretty! Is it some sort of Ice Plant?

[Bluenose]

I dom't know what an ice plant is.  Pigface is a succulent and ideally suited to our harsh land.  I have several, you can just see the red ones coming into flower in the lwer left of the photo.  I also have one that has white flowers with a bright purple edge that flowers in mid winter, very cheerful at that time of year.

[Opsa]

Here is some info on ice plant. We don't have them here, but we saw them all over the place in southern California one March (early spring in that part of the world) and they were quite stunning.

[anthrobabe]

They are very lovely there Blue. Quite the name as well.

[Darlica]

Spring has really sprung even here in the Stockholm area.

The birds no longer modestly try their voices if I didn't knew better I would think I my bed magically transported itself and me to some remote jungle in the wee hours of the morning, the birds sing constantly from a couple of hours before sunrise until it's completely dark in the evening. The last singing ones to quiet are the blackbirds the last bird to shut it's beak it's a draw between the equally spooky Heron and Loon (the Loons/Divers are only passing through going to more remote and peaceful  little lakes.
The leafs on the earliest trees like the Rowan are budding but it will take quite a time before most trees are green, some early spring flowers are blooming like Coltsfoot, blue anemones and snowdrops.

The as I said Herons are from their vacation in the south as well as the Cranes and the White Wagtail  who BTW is said to be the second last to show up around here, only the Swallows comes later (I'm not sure that's true thought I think some Warblers  shows up between the White Wagtail and the Swallows.

I've even seen some butterflies and a bumblebee or two, the first hibernating mammal I saw this year was a small badger, unfortunately it was lying dead on the side of the road... poor thing, I much prefer when they run around here scaring the stupid woman next door and eating snails by our  trash can.

[Opsa]

I love to hear the birds in the morning, too. In the evening they are joined by the spring peepers, little tree frogs.

The floral harbingers are finishing here, the crocus and earliest daffodils, and now the tulips and narcissus have begun. I have a few buds showing on my way-early dark purple iris, too. The little American plum trees I planted a few years ago had their first show of blossoms. They are small and white with very hairy white stamens and they smell like honey. I'm enchanted. My very favorite tree in the yard at this time of year is the sand cherry. It was a salvage from the tree nursery. Now it stands about six feet tall and has pink blossoms with magenta stamens which smell like sandalwood!

The redbud trees are just beginning to flower in this area. In the morning fog they look like clouds of hot fuschia at the edges of the woods.

[Aggie]

Snowing heavily - must be spring.

OTOH, the first dandelions are blooming, I saw the first robin, and there's ONE tree with green on it within a block of here.

[The Meromorph]

The succubi get younger in the Spring... 

Actually we have a pair of birds that return every spring and insist on building their nest in our gas grill on the deck. If the spring is a hot one, they simply end up with baked eggs  , but if it's not too sunny, they get a nice protected nest site. They're currently raising seven little birdies...   

[Sibling Qwertyuiopasd]

The green (mostly of the grass) can best be described as... pervasive

Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen.

[Opsa]

Hey- it must be spring! The Qwerty has flown back from Capistrano! 

[Sibling Chatty]

Spring?

93 degrees at 8 PM.

What spring??

Spring has sprung.
Fall done fell.
Summer is come,
And it's hotter than usual...

[Sibling Qwertyuiopasd]

also it got really bright really early really quick.

Really.

[Opsa]

First spring bloom to be spotted in my yard! (see below)

[Aggie]

I've been munching a few sprigs of chickweed here and there already.

[Sibling DavidH]

We've had Snowdrops out for some weeks; now we have three Daffs as well.  A few hawthorns here and there have been showing little leaves since January.  Whoopee!

[Griffin NoName]

Nothing has changed in my bedroom

[Bluenose]

Still hot as Hades here, has been a long hard stretch of hot weather lately.  Yesterday had numerous bushfire outbreaks around the state including on the northern outskirts of Melbourne.  No threat to the Blue hacienda - probably about 40 km away from here - but one house was destroyed and another damaged.  Still officially summer here, autumn arrives 1 March.  Can't wait for winter at the moment!

[pieces o nine]

Blue, I would happily send you some of the cold winds and light snow here in exchange for some of that heat there.  Have they projected an end to the current fire outbreak?

[Bluenose]

Thanks Pieces, your post must have worked, at least a little bit - it was not quite so hot last night, making for a more comfortable sleep.   Today is the first one in quite a while forecast to be under 30° C, it's forecast for 29°.  Then it heats back up again.

On the fire front the ones on the outskirts of Melbourne are under control but the big fires like the one in the high country are contained to a degree but will only be put out when we get some decent rains.  Probably not until the second half of April or so.