A bird's nest

This bird's nest fell -- empty -- out of the big pine in our backyard.

Palo verde tree

Parkinsonia microphylla, the yellow palo verde or foothill palo verde tree, also known as Cercidium microphyllum.  Sometimes it is called simply paloverde.

This tree is becoming very popular as a street tree here in north Fullerton, presumably for its drought-tolerance, as well as its cheerful yellow flowers. The leaves are curiously like pine needles.  This particular tree is growing on a bare patch in a micro-park, and carpets the ground beneath it with the blossoms in spring.

A new tree

A new tree "planted" on a phone company box.  Someone with a sense of humor lives nearby!

Spring border

This is the border we saw earlier when the cornflowers were the main feature.  Now the pinks and reds have come into the fore.  There are pink and orange poppies, rose campion (Lychnis coronaria) and red sweet william (Dianthus barbatus), with white alyssum and still a few blue cornflowers here and there.

An unidentified moth

Red admiral

I found this butterfly when I was weeding this morning. It was very sluggish, and had its antennae folded back under its wings for a long time -- perhaps it was newly come from its chrysalis? It kept its wings closed for some minutes, even as I picked off the sprig it was resting on, and carried up to the house, admiring the beautiful mottled black and brown and tan of the underside of its wings, like the cross-section of a sedimentary rock -- then it suddenly dropped its wings open to reveal the orange stripes.

This is a red admiral (Vanessa atalanta). I regret to say that our back yard has quite a lot of stinging nettles -- or had, before this morning -- although apparently the upside is that the red admiral caterpillar is quite fond of them.

(The pictures are a bit blurry ...)

Rosa "Cécile Brünner"

"Cécile Brünner" -- also called the "Sweetheart Rose", "Climbing Mignon", or "Buttonhole Rose" -- is a polyantha first introduced in 1881, and in its climbing form in 1894. It has long been a favorite of gardeners, for its pretty pale-pink flowers and its hardiness in a wide variety of climates and conditions, as well as resistance to most rose diseases. It can grow from 15 to 30 ft. (4.7 to 9 m), but is easily kept smaller.

This particular bush was whacked back to stubs a few months ago, but has bounced back quite prettily.