It’s plum beautiful!

 For the past several days, we’ve enjoyed the roadside beauty of wild plum bushes/trees in blossom. It’s one of our favorite events, along with other trees and bushes coming into flower. Speaking of which, our pear tree is just now coming into bloom. Many years it will reach peak bloom and the next day thunderstorms and winds will strip the blossoms. Maybe this year the sequence will be reversed since the storms this week have already passed through.

roadside wild plum blooming

Photo by J. Harrington

Last year the pear tree failed to produce fruit. I’m not sure if it was due to lack of pollination, we didn’t see any bees on the blossoms, or too brief a period of flowering, or something else. The failure to produce pears over the summer ended up with very few visits from the local whitetail deer during autumn and winter. We’ve got our fingers crossed that this year the tree will be more productive.

pear tree near peak bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Oak trees have leafed out and the spaces between the branches are rapidly infilling with growing leaves. Dandelions in our backyard have finally produced flowers a week or so after the Daughter Person’s yard, despite the fact that she, Son-In-Law and Granddaughter live about 15 miles north of us. No signs of germination yet in the newly reseeded front yard but a mole tunnel that wasn’t there when we were raking has erupted. We’ll try again to use our mole trap, which has yet, over several years, to capture a mole. Moles, pocket gophers, dead oak branches all over the landscape and deer munching on the plants are among the frustrations of country living. Then again, they’re less annoying than some of the neighbors we’ve had to tolerate in suburban and urban locations.

May to April

Philip Freneau - 1752-1832

Without your showers, I breed no flowers,
    Each field a barren waste appears;
If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep,
    They take such pleasures in your tears.

As your decay made room for May,
    So I must part with all that’s mine:
My balmy breeze, my blooming trees
    To torrid suns their sweets resign!

O’er April dead, my shades I spread:
    To her I owe my dress so gay—
Of daughters three, it falls on me
    To close our triumphs on one day:

Thus, to repose, all Nature goes;
    Month after month must find its doom:
Time on the wing, May ends the Spring,
    And Summer dances on her tomb!

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