spring

Night shifts to dawn

At first darkness yields only very slightly and the first bird to sing is quiet, murmuring a few quizzical, uncertain, almost apologetic notes. A few minutes later, that same bird sings the same few notes, sounding a little more certain. A second bird joins a little while later, more certain still. Dark turns slowly to gray and more birds start singing. Soon, dawn rushes on, the sky lightens, and many birds start singing, no gaps between songs, many species, many notes. The cheerful Spring dawn chorus fills the chill morning air as color begins to spread across the landscape in advance of the rising sun. By the time the first rays brightly illuminate the ridges, the bird orchestra is loud across the farm and as far as you can trace sound. Each taller shrub and at the top of many trees there are tilting, perky birds, beaks outstretched, singing away.

Spring Antics

As it warms, bluebirds and black phoebes flit about, catching bugs. Barn swallows warm on perches awaiting a brighter sun before taking to the air. Towhees strut through short grass, darting at one another, chasing for fun or territoriality. As the dew dries, one of the yard bunnies hops inquisitively towards another. The wide-eyed approached one suddenly flattens itself hugging the ground, snaking forward slowly and then faster on a pathway through the low grass, ears back, while the other hops again and again over its pancaked friend: what oddness! Spring morning antics.

Green

Bolting grasses dry from the tops and from the bottom. The tallest grasses turn tawny above still-green fields. The grassy understory is browning, too. A gust carries dust clouds away from the road and across the fields. Despite the drying, overall a lush green prevails. Big bushy oaks shimmer life above pulsing green fields. The morning warmth massages a sweet perfume from the grass, which changes with the drying day to the scent of dusty pollen. Middays have become quite warm, though sometimes breezy. Cheerful bird solos continue right through the day.

Birds in Air

The afternoon breeze carries soaring red-tailed hawks, loudly screaming, one following the other in broad circles, high across the sky. The ravens, too, enjoy soaring on the wind but more in long arcs from one side of the farm to the other, loudly beating their wings and furtively glancing about for something to scrounge. Something startles a flock of band tailed pigeons, and they take flight but not so high in the sky, making for one patch of trees, then suddenly veering to another. One pigeon isn’t paying attention, gets too far ahead of the others, which have turned for another destination; it panics and wheels about, making lots of strong and rapid wing beats to catch up to its family. The standard number of pigeons is 14, but the flock was 30 for a brief bit…some apparently were just passing through. The regular flock patrols the walnut trees hoping for ripening catkins which will shortly make them fat and happy. I’m not sure what keeps them fed in the meanwhile- there doesn’t seem to be much to eat for those big birds.

Molino Creek Farm’s Dryfarmed Tomatoes – Just planted this week

Planting

Bodhi and Judy have been planting the summer crops. Long rows of tomato seedlings are settling in nicely, in less than a week already overcoming transplant shock with perky new leaves facing skyward. Succulent leaves of freshly planted onions contrast greatly with the deep brown soil, poking up from row after freshly planted row. Green crop seedlings are hard to see in the broad swaths of brown, tilled soil, striped in rows of tractor tire tracks.

Lapins Cherry Trees – Thanks, Drake Bialecki for the grafting!

Peak Bloom

The orchards are in peak bloom. Though the cherries are just a bit past peak, on average the various varieties of other fruit trees make for the most floriferous moment in orchard bloom. With so many flowers, the trees have created a thick blanket of pink across the hillsides. The avocado spring is more subtle, but still their masses of tiny yellow-green flowers overshadow both the broad, old green leaves and the emerging spikes of purple-bronze leaflets. I was pleased to find honeybees on the avocado flower clusters today- the first time the hive has turned its attention to this essential service. Peak bloom, however it appears, is beautiful, the blossom parade a constant show of dancing pollinators one type arriving after the next. As the day progresses, the afternoon warmth waves clouds of ecstatic perfume into the aisles. Gradually, the day cools and the scent changes back to grass and mold and dew.

Evening

The light fails and great horned owls glide silently out of the tall trees on the canyon edge, across the farm fields. They perch on fence posts and trees closer to the rodent-filled grasses and weeds. When the sun disappears behind the ridge, the evening turns quickly colder. As the setting sun finishes raking the higher hillsides with its golden glow, we retreat home for sweaters and wool hats. Chores demand further outdoor time until the light completely fails, now at almost half past eight. Burr! It turns cold with the darkness and gets chillier all night. Recently, it got down to 44F by dawn. Some fruit trees long for hundreds of chill hours, leafing out only after arriving at their total: their clocks are still gathering those hours, and the (shortening) cold nights keep them snoozing and gathering strength for their (eventual) leafy season.

Sky lupine and purple needlegrass on one of the Farm’s ridges

Bicolor lupine and more on a knoll on the Farm

Wild Flowers

The wildlands are blooming spring. Two types of lupine, the big and the small, as well as poppy, tarplant, blue eyed grass, vetch, and purple sanicle have burst into flower and paint big patches with crazy color mixes and fascinating patterns. In the forest, white starburst panicles of fat false Solomon’s seal and the simpler four petals of purple-white milk maids brighten road cuts above Molino Creek Farm. More than anything, miles of the fire-following shrub California lilac throw rafts and sprays of pale blue blossoms, drowning out their shiny green leaves. The scent of this blueblossom is heady and sweet, but only faintly like the more-sweet perfume of the old-world traditional lilac which also has much more showy flowers.

An Unusual Dreariness of Spring

Drizzle and fog surprised us this past week as dew-covered wildflowers blossomed, buried in tall soggy grass. The weather forecasters had said it would be sunny, but something changed and suddenly the outlook went to partly, and then mostly, cloudy. Gusts blew tiny misty droplets against the windows. Trees caught the mist, making showers in rings, illustrating ‘driplines’ on the previously dusty roads.

Drying

But the mist and drizzle were not enough. The soil is drying. The 2 inches of late rain two weeks ago can no longer forestall the normal drying of our Mediterranean summer. A day of stiff, dry winds from the north wicked away the moister 2” down into the soil and the drying keeps reaching deeper. The long days keep the plant transpiration pumps pumping. The prairies won’t be green much longer. The orchard trees need water starting now.

Eye Hurtingly Beautiful

The flowers bursting forth in the apple orchard are stunning. Artists! Ganderers! It is time to bask in the dizziness that only a grove full of apple blossoms can impart. Sauntering around the farm, I take what I expect will be the normal short tangential turn into the apple orchard. Soon, I am stumbling around, not paying enough attention to footing, going from tree to tree, from one palette of pink and white and red blossoms to another, slightly more white or slightly more pink…some petals more lush, some clusters more diffuse…some flowers displayed in widely spaced massive shelf platforms…others arranged in small, tightly spaced clusters of polka-dot-like puffs for long distances along branches. Petals falling like snow on the breeze. Pale green points of new leaves poke forth from buds. Lush grass and flowers in understory tufts. Bees, hummingbirds, and flocks of tiny peeping juncos dart and dance with the beauty. An hour later, driven out by the dwindling daylight, I emerge from the orchard bedazzled and grinning from the ‘short tangent’ of my evening walk.

Soil Fields

In stark contrast to the orchard full of life are acres of brown, tilled ground. Life there is under the surface among clod and crumb where worms and millipedes and a million tinier things wriggle and crawl. It is cool and damp below the plowed surface where no plant now grows. We conserve a winter of rain by making the top foot of soil into mulch, and it takes a lot of turns of the tractor to make that happen. And so we set the stage where the drama of dry farming tomatoes is starting to take place.

First Tomato Day

The greenhouse grown tomato seedlings are tall and lanky and so take delicate hands to carefully place them in holes dug deep through the loose, tractor worked ground. The first seedlings went in the ground today, April 24, 2024! There are so many more plants to nestle into their homes. The big empty fields fill slowly, thousands of deep knee bends, hours of meditative labor, months before getting any income from this year’s crop. Such is the gamble and the hope.

Our First Ground Squirrel

Ground squirrels have been spreading across the landscape. They probably were here before and probably were effectively poisoned out when poisoning the landscape was in vogue. A single ground squirrel bounds across the road into various hiding places down by the big walnut tree many times a day, seen by many people. This squirrel is a keystone species for our prairies, making deep burrows that are critical for other creatures to make it through the hot, dry summer, and through fires, too. Burrowing owls need those holes for nests. Golden eagles’ and badgers’ favorite food is ground squirrels. Ground squirrel burrow complexes also may assist with groundwater recharge. The squirrels make habitat for wildflowers as they graze down invasive grasses. Bubonic plague is ubiquitous in ground squirrel populations, too! And, they undermine houses and roads with those burrows. Farmers and ranchers think of ground squirrels as pests for eating their crops. What are we to do with this first explorer of an astronaut squirrel?

The Individuality of Trees

Just as every apple tree has character, the live oaks too show individuality. We are fortunate to have several groves of live oaks on the farm that survived the 2020 wildfire. One grove thrived because we had mowed around it and then were vigilant with wetting them with fire hoses when the fire raged – it was too close to the barn and other buildings to allow it to burn. The various trees of this grove are displaying the range of traits typical of coast live oaks. New leaves are flushing: these ‘evergreen’ oaks nevertheless mostly replace last year’s leaves around now. The fresh leaves are emerging at different times and in different shades of green, depending on the individual tree. Some are already in bloom, long pollen bearing tassels waving in the wind. Other trees haven’t shown any blossoms yet at all. The lush new growth is forming densely green, bushy canopies, These deep-rooted trees will continue to be that kind of vibrantly alive for a few more months…long after the grass has dried brown.

Lupines!

Each year, as a result of our careful stewardship, we get more and more sky lupines. This year is the biggest year yet. Patches of sky lupines are mostly mixed with California poppies. There is something so very right about the mix of wide-petaled, fiery orange poppy flowers mixed with lines and waves of spikes of whorled blue-and-white lupine flowers. It hasn’t yet been warm and still long enough to get the grape bubble gum scent clouds emanating from the lupine patches. Between these fields of wildflowers and the orchards full of blossoming trees, the bees have lots of choices. We are glad they are getting enough food to grow big families on our farm, a haven for pollinators.

Suddenly Spring Sprung

The Spring Equinox was a few weeks ago, and the natural world around the Monterey Bay is full of signs of the season. From wildflowers to birds, from the gophers to the grass, life is waking up. Forest bathing or any sort of time in nature is good for the soul and actively seeking out personal interactions with the signs of the season allows us to stay in touch with ancient rhythms of life…slowing down…nurturing our roots in this wonderful place.

California popply in a sea of Madia, which flowers later. There is lupine and brome grass, too

Wildflowers

We’re already past the first wildflowers of the year, but we haven’t missed many. Footsteps of spring is still in bloom- patches of bright yellow color splash across shallow soiled areas in grasslands. Nearby in those same grasslands and in the adjoining shrubby areas, you can see peopleroot, aka wild cucumber, a romping vine pushing up spikes of wonderfully scented cream-colored flowers. Still in those grasslands, poppy flowers have opened: the first ones are always the biggest, tulip sized! Santa Cruz’ Moore Creek greenbelt, Monterey’s Point Lobos, and the grasslands at Fort Ord are all good places to see grasslands’ unfolding spring wildflowers.

Get to some chaparral and you can see the first Ceanothus flowers alongside the waning honey-scented manzanita bloom. Fort Ord is a fine place to see a rare type of chaparral with unusual manzanitas and ceanothus species. Henry Cowell and Wilder Ranch State Parks have some nice patches, too. Report back on the state of the wildflowers in chaparral or grasslands, please!

Swallow Arrival

The first barn swallows returned to Santa Cruz County’s North Coast on March 19, 2023. They traveled from somewhere way south – the tropics where they spent the winter getting fat on different types of bugs. They arrived just in time to eat the early season bees, mosquitoes, and moths. They left when this place was dusty and dry and returned to a vibrant, green, moist landscape. They are just settling in and will soon be scooping up mud to repair or build new nests. I haven’t seen any other swallow species, yet- have you?

Furry Critters

Gophers are throwing soil with gusto, having just woken up for the Spring. The voles have been awake and active for a while, already. Baby voles are dispersing into new areas, and the very violent interactions between voles and gophers has commenced.

Young brush bunnies emerged from their birth dens about 2 weeks ago, half the size of the adults and so very cute. About a month ago, I encountered an adult brush bunny ‘thumping’ – something I’d read about as a youth in Richard Adams’ book Watership Down. An anxious-looking bunny was rushing between shrubs, ducking under cover and then thumping its hind legs onto the ground so hard as to make a drumming noise. It had its eyes on me- very odd, since I thought I had previously had a fairly trusting relationship with the local bunny families. Perhaps this individual was an interloper from another family as this behavior was a one-time thing.

Long tailed weasels are feeding on gophers, voles, and young rabbits as are coyotes and bobcats. It had been a long time since I saw any bobcats, but two appeared in the area in the last month, so maybe their population is rebounding around Davenport.

Grass

It is the season of grass. Get to a weedy wet patch and you’ll see the most remarkable bright shiny green of Italian ryegrass, an invasive species that reflects light brightly from its leaf blades. The cold nights have tinged some grasses red or purple. Disease from the moist winter makes other grasses turn yellow or orange. The first grass flowers are emerging, but most are a ways away. I was surprised to see some foxtails already, normally a later spring grass flower. How tall with the grass grow? You can see it gain height by the day right now, but not long ago it just got slowly thicker across the ground. The longer and warmer days make for rocketing grass growth. Later rains keep it getting taller, but without rain grass drinks up the soil moisture and patches start to brown on shallow soil quickly after warm spells.

Trees

This is the moment of Spring where we can enjoy the colorful signs of the genetic diversity of coast live oaks. Some coast live oaks unfurl their spring leaves earlier, some later. Examine patches of coast live oaks and see the personalities shine with varying leafing out timing, and even varying colors of new leaves. I like the more maroon new leaves, but the paler spring green trees are also wonderful.

Buckeyes and big leaf maples are breaking bud. Rare in our area, patches of black and valley oaks are also starting to think about leafing out. I recently travelled through the Sierra Nevada foothills and saw the blue oak forest waking up. I love to catch blue oak bud break as patches of that forest turn the most amazing purple-blue right as their leaf buds start to swell, before the leaves unfurl. Now is that time.

Time Passing

The moments of Spring pass quickly, so that if you miss visiting natural areas a few weeks in a row, you will miss an entire sub-portion of the season. The birds will come to you, though – keep an eye out for the swallows wheeling in the air, harbingers of spring! If you haven’t planned on visiting your favorite lupine patch, start planning: they are a few weeks away, but a spring without lupines isn’t ever quite the same.

-this post originally published by Bruce Bratton at his wonderful weekly blog, BrattonOnline.com – donate, subscribe, and so forth and you’ll be regularly in touch with so much around the Monterey Bay

Black Berry Blossom

Wild blackberries are blooming big time. Their brambly tip-rooting canes are sprouting new leaves and are festooned with bright white five-petalled flowers. In rare years, they make tasty, juicy berries, but mostly the weather turns hot and dry, and the fruits are seedy/not-so juicy. Currently, they are making pollen and nectar for the emerging bumble bees, while we dream of the tasty fruit. Wild blackberries are the dominant wildflower right now on the farm, creating hedgelets along all the fences ‘cause that’s where we can’t mow them too much. They arch out from there onto our fence-side trails: trip hazards!

Rubus ursinus, literally bear blackberry…in full bloom right now

Wild Lilac

Soon, there will be more wildflowers – spring is on the verge of letting loose! Nearby, on south-facing shallow-soiled spots, the poppy displays are epic splashes of orange, bigger than any recent year. Across Molino Creek, on that steep south facing slope, a large patch of poppy orange has erupted where before the fire there had been shrubs. I’m looking forward to the woodland iris displays, though they are getting overtaken by post-fire shrubs like blue blossom (Ceanothus), which is starting to blossom as well. In about 2 weeks, there will be miles of blue blossom shrubs blooming about 5 feet high across at least half of the 85,000-acre burn footprint of the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire. Imagine a sea of powder blue, framed by glossy light green leaves…thousands of acres of rolling wild lilac scent wafting headily, luring you to just stand still and gaze.

Ridge Guardians

More than a few of the noble ridge-line tree skeletons have fallen, but many remain silhouetted on the ridgelines. The redwoods have enjoyed the rain and are recovering from drought and fire with luxurious new growth; the ones that burned hotter sprouting from only their trunks…others from their branches…and all of them from the base of their trunks with 5’+ tall sprouts sprinting skyward. And everywhere, between it all, so very green and lush, but the ground is getting drier.

The ridge to the North of Molino Creek Farm

Drying Out

Even with all the rain, the ground is starting to dry out. Once the rain stops, even for a little while, the long days and the strong breezy days we’ve been having make for quick dry soil. The upper 2” of soil is dry, dry, but below it is still pretty moist. Gophers are awaking and their soil throws are starting to appear, moist piles burying the surrounding lush grass. Roots pump moisture from deep in the earth and plants grow quickly to blossom and seed before the last moisture is gone and the long dry summer sets in.

Green Manure

The most proud bolt is in cover crop land. Thick bell bean stalks sport rows of big white flowers and flapping succulent leaves. Twining ferny leaved vetch climbs up those stalks. Pert sharp leaves of oats grow in thick forests through it all, promising tons of tough stems for future spongy soil organic matter.

Bell beans, oats, and vetch – ‘soil builder mix’ – a cover crop that conserves and builds soil for organic farms

Along Come the Mowers

Back and forth, hither and yon, the mowers must mow. Behind the machines, dense mats of sweet-smelling chopped up vegetation, either to be tractored into the soil or left on top as mulch, protecting the earthworms from sunburn. We rush to mow the farm fields and the orchard understory to keep the plants from sucking up the soil moisture, to keep the water for the crops to delay irrigation for as long as we can.

It’s suddenly become a busy time around the Farm. I suspect the spring is revving everyone’s energy about now. Keep calm and plod forward!

-from my weekly blog also posted at Molino Creek Farm’s website.

Warm Spring Days

From blustery and cool to only slightly breezy and hot. Today might have been 80F and tomorrow will be, too, but the nights will cool down so we can open the windows and cool the houses. Big big waves blown in from some massive storm way way out there; the beaches were swarming with daring surfers this evening at sundown.

Farm Critters

The crickets have been chirping for the last week or so. As usual, the black field cricket is the first to sing. Their brethren the grasshoppers have an early start with fat large adults flying around already.

On the land at Swanton Pacific Ranch today, just over the hill from Molino, I saw a 18” terrestrial garter snake, a 2’ gopher snake, and a 15” yellow bellied racer as well as fence lizards galore. Alligator lizards are around, too. April is always reptile month- and this time around is no exception. Time to see snakes! The gopher snake’s body was bulging in three locations- well fed and recently shed- very shiny new skin.

Real, honest to gosh birders are surveying the Farm these days. Storey La Montagne and Martha Brown were roaming around this morning when I woke up. They reported yellow rumped warblers (“getting ready to leave”) and had good words to say about the numbers of western blue birds. Storey’s been owling here and confirmed our regular farm friend the pygmy owl. When they were here this morning, there were just barn swallows. And then, when I went down to Swanton the day saw increasing numbers of violet green and maybe other types of swallows- from 5 to 50 over the course of the morning. Welcome back swallows, almost goodbye yellow rumped warblers and golden crowned sparrows! I neglected to discuss with them Maw and Caw who curiously had one of last year’s offspring visit them this evening: and then there were three, all friendly as can be.

Little to no predator poop- few bobcats, coyotes, or fox. Only very rare sightings of deer. A bunny here, a bunny there- not many. Dead woodrat in my yard- neck strangled, dropped…gone to the turkey vultures a couple (stinky) days later. Mowing is revealing a plethora of mice, including many of those most tiny and cute harvest mice- must be having a good year. Field mice are probably having a particularly good year for all of the gophers that erupted through the last year, after the population crash of voles. The voles are coming back- beware gophers! The first vole trails are getting mowed and populations are on the rise again.

Apple orchard in full bloom; still recovering from 2020 wildfire…how will they do?

Forage and Fruit

The apples are in peak bloom right now, as of the last 2 days- there’s a few more days of peak bloom left, including this Saturday’s gathering. Pink! White! And, if you get there early or late in the day, you can be tricked into thinking the apple blossoms smell like lupine as that scent settles through the orchard from not far away. Limes are getting ripe and the Orchard Collective members are up to their eyeballs in lime-i-ness: lime juice frozen in ice cube trays…limes peeled and sucked on by Milo…lime drinks…what more?? And, we’re eating pea shoots from the cover crop, but nothing really much more coming in from the fields just yet. In the eternal irony of farm life, the Spring is the time of food shortage, the longest time since the last meaningful harvest of Most Things. And so, we eat the canned things and forage on Spring Greens like miner’s lettuce and baby this and that volunteering from last year’s greens seed crops. Oh, and arugula.

Its not your eyes…the flowers are blurry and the foliage in focus! Sticky monkeyflower. Trippy monkeyflower

It All Happens At Once

On the hillsides around the tilled fields, the normally staggered blossoms of shrubs are all happening right now. Bush lupines, California lilac, sticky monkeyflower, lizard tail, oso berry…all blooming now. There’re not many lilacs of blooming age, just yet- most burned- but, the few missed by fire are weighted down with big wads of blue flower clusters that are quite magnificent. The bush lupines, too- what magnificent lavender displays! It would be delightful to be a bee right now- food everywhere.

California lilac aka Ceanothus thrysiflorus in bloom right now, if you can find a mature bush left by the wildfire

The Work

Farm work means mowing and irrigating right now. All the fields are shorn except the orchard areas, which we are hitting post haste most days. In the vein of ‘it all happens at once’ we had to fix up irrigation a month early and just finished our first full pass of watering trees. It takes ~7 hours of microsprinklers to rehydrate the soil this year…it dried down too much before we started the watering. The solar pump is running constantly for the first time since last October. Soon, the farmers will put hoe to ground and start planting seedlings…

-this post copied from the original location at my blog on Molino Creek Farm’s website

It’s Lupine Time

In the local prairies, it is an especially prolific lupine blossoming year. Do you have a favorite place to visit lupines? The most prolific, bright, large flowered annual lupine in our area is called sky lupine, because when it is in full bloom in large fields, it looks like someone turned the world upside down. The scent is heady- it smells purple. For those of us who grew up smelling purple in grape Kool Aid or various artificially flavored grape bubble gums, it makes sense that sky lupine smell purple. In good years, I am able to go to my favorite lupine patches at just the right time when acre upon acre are giving off that scent and making extensive mats of lupine colors.

Lupinus nanus, aka sky lupine, an annual native wildflower that grows best without grassy competition

Lupine Diversity

Lupines are pea family plants. Look carefully, and you’ll recognize that sweet pea shaped flower. Lupines typically have flowers in a spike of tightly packed whorls with older flowers turning to seed pods at the bottom and new flowers opening at the top. Lupine seed pods look like pea pods. Sky lupine pods explode on warm days pitching seeds far from the mother plant.

Sky lupine isn’t the only lupine around, there are many lupine species in Santa Cruz County. It might make a good treasure hunt to try to see them all. According to Dylan Neubauer’s Annotated Checklist of the Vascular Plants of Santa Cruz County, California (every naturalist in the County should have this), there are sixteen lupine species in our tiny county. Sky lupine is the only one to make a big show in the grasslands.

A very modest lupine, Lupinus bicolor, aka ‘miniature lupine’ another of the 16 species of lupines in Santa Cruz County, California

Who Eats Lupines?

Italians eat lupines! Strains of white lupine, Lupinus albus, have been cultivated for food throughout Europe. But you have to grow the right strain- some strains are very toxic! In fact, most lupines are toxic…

Here’s a challenge: find sky lupine leaves that are being eaten by a butterfly or moth caterpillar! In researching this essay, I explored the possibility that some beautiful butterfly larva fed on sky lupine. Nope! Lupines famously have some potent toxins. Some species of lupines poison cattle, though I’ve not heard that livestock owners are concerned about sky lupine around here. There are some butterflies and moths that feed on perennial lupine bushes locally, but none that we know of that feed on sky lupine.

Masses of Lupine propinquus popped up after the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fire at Molino Creek Farm

Lupine Pollinators

It isn’t a burden to sit in a sky lupine patch to watch for pollinators. You’ll quickly realize that bumble bees love lupine flowers. And, if you look at those bumblebee legs, you’ll see the distinct yellow orange sky lupine pollen color – they collect big globs of it.

And yet, sky lupine doesn’t need a pollinator, it can self-pollinate. But sky lupine flowers make more seed if they get pollinated by bees. The species has an interesting adaptation- some tiny hairs that prevent self-pollination at first; these hairs wilt with time, allowing self-pollination if all else fails.

Sky lupine mixing it up with California poppy- a common combination and always lovely

Planting Lupines

You might be tempted to plant sky lupine- certainly expensive wildflower mixes contain this species and display its color on the fancy seed packets. However, its not that easy. Sky lupine seeds are tough and unpredictable to germinate. Friends have been sending me pictures from places they’ve never seen sky lupines before- the seeds have been in the soil for decades waiting for the right year to germinate! Check out the seeds, sometime- they are beautifully marked with a shiny, waxy seed coat. The seeds are hard as rocks, meant to last years in the soil.

There are many different types of sky lupine, each adapted to its own microclimate. So, if you really really want to get some sky lupines growing, get to a patch nearby and get local seed- collect the pods as they start to dry. Place the drying pods in a paper bag in the sun and wait. Soon, you’ll get to hear the pods exploding in the bag and you’ll know that you got some good seed. Make sure that the pods and seeds are nice and dry before storing them until next fall. As the first rain storm is predicted, cast the seeds around where you want sky lupine…rake them into the soil if you can…and wait- sometimes for years!

Lupinus albifrons, silver bush lupine, in the Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve- post 2020 fire flush

Lupine Places

Back in the early 1900’s, many regular Santa Cruz citizens would enjoy Spring wildflower trips to the North Coast grasslands to collect wildflowers. They would bring bouquets home with them and garland their hair and clothes with colorful displays. Now, with long mismanagement of many of those grasslands, there are few wildflower patches left. Anyway, if you do find wildflowers, you’re not supposed to pick them anymore. We ought to leave them for whatever remnant populations of rare pollinators might be around, waiting for us to figure out how to better manage the prairies.

Locally, two places to visit sky lupines come to mind. It used to be that the Glenwood Preserve in Scotts Valley had good sky lupine displays, but I haven’t had a report this year. A little drive to the south, and spring always brings great sky lupine displays in the grasslands and oak savannas of Fort Ord National Monument. There’s something particularly appealing to me about the large patches of sandy grasslands full of lupines surrounded by gnarly short coast live oaks at Ft. Ord. Those sky lupine patches are frequently large enough to get that lupine smell, experience that upside down world with the sky on the ground, and thousands of bumble bees bopping around the flowers.

-I originally published this post at Bruce Bratton’s weekly blog BrattonOnline.com

Blue Skies, Bursting Blossoms

Right on time, the first tulip-sized California poppies have opened. Unusually, and a month early, the sky lupines have started blossoming, as well. The habitat areas, field margins, the hedgerow, and the orchard are starting to fill with Spring blooms. We hope for the return of rain before Spring’s beginning date arrives.

first lupines.jpg — Lupinus nanus Sky Lupine Too early, but still nice

For a few nights, the air has carried a winter scent, like snow; frost decorates leaves in the grassy areas and wild radish leaves wilt from cold damage. We check the margins of avocado and citrus leaves to see if they are damaged. But, its only been evaporative frost- we still haven’t hit critical freezing temperatures! The cool temperatures are helping some fruit trees to sleep well, but others are waking up. The Santa Rosa plum popped into bloom – it only needs 250 accumulated hours of temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Other stone fruit trees are budding and/or blooming in the orchard.

SRosa Plum.jpg — Juicy Santa Rosa Plums start with brilliant flowers

The semi-cacophony of blackbirds continues, and other birdy things are happening, too. The blackbirds mostly gather in one tree but as you look around, the party has outliers as bicolor blackbirds court one another away from the crowd. I watched for a while as one outlier male bicolor blackbird did his thing: the trilling scree song while bowing slightly, wings shrugged out, flashing his bright red wing patches. A few feet away, a female watched in rapture…it was just this pair alone at the top of an isolated tree, though they kept glancing towards their flock in the tree nearby. Buzzing by, not entirely oblivious to the blackbird antics…hummingbirds, up to their own shenanigans.

Somewhere, I heard that the blossoming of the flowering currants triggers estrous in hummingbirds. Allen’s hummingbirds returned with those blooms from somewhere Way South. I’m not sure how the year-round resident Anna’s hummingbirds like them. Bright flashing throats and aerial sparring is constant around our yards and up and down the hedgerow. Flowering currant isn’t common in the wild around here, though you can find other, less showy species in that genus in the forests surrounding the farm- the hummingbirds like those, too. With the early nesting of hummingbirds under way, it is time to closely inspect any brush we are clearing before chopping it down. There never seems to be enough time to cut out brush for fire safety, especially when being careful with nesting birds.

ribes glut.jpg — Ribes sanguineum glutinosum, pink flowering currant – hummingbird food!

The farm fields are sleeping…the cover crops have slowed down with so little rain. The soil surface is dry, road traffic makes dust again. Limes are ripe, tangerines and oranges have color but no sugar, yet. Meyer lemons are hanging heavy and ready to go into lemonade or pie.

The Molino Creek Canyon has changed so much since the fire of August 2020. Big trees and many burn damaged redwood branches have crashed down across the hillside around our farm’s beautiful wintertime waterfall, which is flowing and noisy still. It is difficult to hike there, but we’ll open up the paths again soon with chainsaws and muscle. I’ve been exploring Molino creek, which was heavily scoured by the big rains in December. Now, it is so much easier to walk by the creek- no vegetation and a rocky sidewalk of a path alongside the clear running stream. There are potential dunking holes for the summer and wide rocky beaches. The large expanse of sandstone bedrock has accumulated a covering of redwood seeds. Last year, the redwoods made an Epic Cone Crop, with cones much larger than anyone had seen before. The branches were heavy with cones. For the last month, those seeds have released from the opening cones: dropping and scattering onto the ground. Now there is a red-brown scattering of the delicate seeds. In moist cracks, the seeds are germinating: a new crop of redwoods, just as their mother intended- a rare sight as redwood seedlings only ever get going on bare ground following a fire.

-I published this at my regular blog at Molino Creek Farm’s webpage.