Category: Nature

It has been a tough summer for gardens here in the city, with that heat wave at the end of June.
The leaves on the long shoots of my little rose bush got scorched, but a beautiful red rose has bloomed on the lower one, in the shade.

The pair of northern flickers (Colaptes auratus) that I sometimes see here around my house, came by late this afternoon.

I found this display of two chatty dinosaurs on a rock by the sidewalk close to 18th Ave.

It was a very pleasant 67 °F (19 °C) when I went out for a walk today.

Just as efforts to create a blue rose have stymied growers and plant geneticists, so have efforts to create a red iris. The flower has almost no red pigment naturally.
– Barbara Whitaker in a report called ‘The Hunt Continues for the Holy Grail: A Red Iris’ in the NYT, in 2006

---

Irises come in every color of the rainbow, but not in a true red. I found these ‘red’ ones here in my neighborhood.

It felt like summer today (76 °F/ 24 °C), but we will drop back to cooler weather tomorrow.

The shrubby peony plant has long been cultivated for its large showy flowers, and it’s easy to see why. This one comes out of my friends’ garden.

heath
/hēTH/
noun
BRITISH
an area of open uncultivated land, especially in Britain, with characteristic vegetation of heather, gorse, and coarse grasses.

---

It’s the month of May, so the rhododendron flowers are blooming here on Capitol Hill. These plants belong to Ericaceae, a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family.

There was more rain today, bringing the April total to 0.95 in (24 mm). This is still far below the average for April (2.71 in / 69 mm).

I played a little tennis indoors this morning, mask on. My friend from tennis volunteers at the big vaccination clinic at the Lumen Field football stadium here in the city. He says they give 8,000 people a jab in the arm there every day, but could take it up to 22,000 if they could get more doses of vaccine.

There was light rain outside and cold weather, all day long (49 °F/ 9 °C).

I hesitate to say ‘Happy Earth Day’.
Of course we should celebrate Earth, but earthlings— our governments and corporations, that is— have to enact and execute aggressive policies to reduce green house gas emissions, and plastics production.

At least the Biden-Harris Administration is a force for good.
President Biden recently announced a new US goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 52 percent of 2005 levels, by the year 2035. In a virtual summit with more than three dozen countries, he urged other nations to do the same.
Every little bit will help.

Here’s Mr & Mrs Jay*, dropping by for a bit on my front lawn.
It looks like one of them indulged in a little sunning (bottom picture below, lying on the ground, wings spread out, to catch more of the warming rays of the sun).  It was morning and still not very warm, when I took the picture.

Meanwhile, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced that backyard bird feeders can be put back up (the number of reports of sick or dead birds across Washington due to the outbreak of salmonellosis, has dropped).

*Steller’s jay (Cyanocitta stelleri); Cyanocitta from the Greek words kuanos (‘dark blue’) and kitta (‘jay’).

My Sunday afternoon started off with a nice game of doubles tennis, but on the way back I was involved a car accident (no injuries, thankfully), that resulted in major damage to my car. Ouch. It might be time to replace my 14-year old Camry, anyway.

The weather people are promising us sun all week, 65 °F (18 °C) by Wednesday, and 75 °F (24 °C) by Saturday.

It’s Saturday/ Caturday. I like cats, especially the big wild ones.
(The term ‘Caturday’ started with the tradition of posting LOLcats to the message board 4chan on Saturdays).

Here’s a busy Mr Robin (or would that be Mrs Robin?), pausing for a moment on my garage roof this morning. There must be a nest under construction, nearby.

It was a treacherous day to scroll through Twitter, with all the April Fool’s Day tweets. Google introduced a ‘self-driving’ bicycle, King County Metro was launching an ‘Infinity Bus*’, the Tracks Suit from Sound Transit, and Prince Charles would soon announce that he would ‘pass’ on becoming King (deferring to Prince William instead).
*It offers arrivals and departures at all times, 24/7/365.

Alright .. enough of this, and time to go for a walk, I thought.