Pictorial baker's dozen around the valley

This selection of thirteen photographs (aka 'baker's dozen' or 'devil's dozen') from around our neighborhood should ensure that I don't have my ear nailed to the darkroom door as a penalty for short measure. The pictures are not in date order, or any other order, except the one that took my fancy. The first picture from 03 April shows the same trees that ten days earlier on the 24 March were shown holding their bare limbs skywards. Although cooler after the first enthusiastic onset of spring, there have been mostly fine days with sunshine and attractive meteorological displays.

The next picture even shows a slight sundog that glowed for a few seconds in the center of the image.

Around the valley new flowers are appearing—some of course were there all through the winter.

I plead guilty to the charge of selective viewing in order to show these tableaux.

The same shrubs appear all around the neighborhood. I am interested to see how this one develops.

A yellow-flowered shrub makes several appearances in the neighborhood. In Rotterdam, Netherlands, there is a gardening club that rejoices in the name 'Stekkengekken', which means 'Cuttings-crazies' (forgive the hyphen in translation, which doesn't form such a good portmanteau word as in Dutch). No large-scale social gathering in this part of the world is complete without a 'Dutch-oven dinner', which is a stew made in a big black cast-iron pot. I wonder if the stekkengekken culture has been imported along with the vittles.

This type of shrub is often subjected to topiary hereabouts to produce simple, neat ornamental bushes.
This young one is just growing naturally, for the time being at least.

Further up the bench, this more mature bush—possibly a different type of plant—has been trimmed naturally with a light hand.

On Wednesday, a vast curtain of cloud spilled over the top of the ridge and obscured the mountains for several hours. When the skies cleared, there was a scattering of snow visible on the upper slopes and the temperature dropped for the remainder of the day. This picture was taken on Friday evening: temperatures had risen and the last few remnants of the snow had almost melted away; perhaps there will be no more snow until later in the year, when the onset of winter brings more.

 

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