Flower Friday : : Manzanita

It's not a wildly impressive shot but as we have had a bit of a break in the rain, if not the chill wind, I did my rounds of the garden. Not much is blooming just now, but the grass is greening up everywhere and Janet's newly planted rye grass next door is coming up a luscious spring green. I was pleased to see lots of flowers on the manzanita, blooming for the first time since we planted it after the fire. The row of narcissus next to the driveway is looking lush and just beginning to bloom, always one of the first things to do so in the new year. Behind them, a couple of Janet's pineapple guavas , which were nothing but black sticks are making a good comeback and even had fruit on them this year.

Trees are falling  everywhere as the ground has become oversaturated and  the rain is predicted to come back tonight, accompanied by high winds. As I read about all the storm mayhem here I commented to John that it would solve a lot of problems if the dead tree just on the other side of our fence blew down. It has a dead branch, the last remaining vestige of the 'brown wall' of fried foliage between our house and the driveway on the opposite side of the house from ours.  Nobody has had time or sufficient inclination to do anything about it. We and the neighbor have both spent a small fortune having dead trees cut down, but it bugs me every time I look out the window.

I mentioned this to Janet who we saw as we were coming back from surveying the creek.  She said she was tempted to drop a dead black tree onto her neighbor's property as it is unlikely that he will do it. He is the guy who took nine years to build a house behind hers which is still sitting empty.  We chatted about her plans for her garden and speculated about the reason for the noise like a pile driver than has been emanating from the house on our other side for days. She invited us over for drinks tomorrow. It's so nice to have next door neighbors again!

And we will have something else to discuss. It seems my wish was heard. Sometime today the offending branch broke off and fell neatly into the swale avoiding our fence....

The rain is starting again but at least we got outside long enough to take a few pictures . The first extra is the new log jam forming in the creek behind a tree which fell across it. The second extra is the fallen branch resting harmlessly on the ground where it fell.