Flowers
Volunteer sunflower from this morning. It took advantage of an emitter and I’m a sucker for known flowering volunteers 🌱
We have a crazy amount of tomatoes ripening all at once — this is just one plant. We have three more.😳 Marigolds we started from seed are finally blooming.


Cultivated California buckwheat (front yard) flowers being buzzed by a honeybee.
One variety of Cultivated California Fuchsias are full bloom in the front yard. This clump regularly blooms first, the others a month or two later.
This beneficial little mantis (and other excellent insects) is why we don’t use insecticide in our yards. 🌱
Front yard cultivated California Buckwheat & a few butterflies (Coliadinae?). 🌱

Our oldest jalapeños are starting to ripen to red. We can’t get delicious ripe peppers from the local store so it is worth growing them. We’ve got a few more days of temperatures where fruit will set… and tons of flowers. Should be very productive! 🌱
Front yard Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) is flowering now. Small pollinators are rejoicing. Maybe this winter it’ll finally have bright red berries. 🌱

First bloom of cultivated California fuchsias. The California buckwheat is about to start feeding pollinators. Toyon is next, though about a week behind last year.🌱


Western redbud has to share soil with a bird planted sunflower.
Front yard California fuchsias (or maybe the buckwheat or the toyon) are next to flower. Our fuchsias and buckwheat can flower all summer into fall and sometimes into winter.

Ensalada Hybrid Tomatoes are doing extremely well in Orland, CA. No sign of end rot or any disease. 🌱


Santa Fe pepper flower and a young Santa Fe pepper. We did get a bit of bacterial spot (?) on the jalapeño plants but that seems to have winked out. 🌱

Pineapple Guavas (Feijoa sellowiana) are flowering. Perhaps this year they’ll fruit.

A Shooting Star (Primula) flower in the August Complex burn area about 1/4 mile north below the summit of Black Butte.

iNaturalist hasn’t confirmed but these purple flowers appear to be Moss Phlox (Phlox subulata) near the cirque & summit of Black Butte in the northern Coast Range of California in the Mendocino National Forest. Again, the rocks make the shot!


Glacier Lily (Erythronium grandiflorum) from near the summit of Black Butte in California’s northern Coast Range. Rocks always make a photo great, but I am biased.
First bloom of the peppers. Serranos in this case. 🌱
Peppers and tomatoes got their second Jobes fertilization today in advance of likely rain. We really don’t want end rot on our fruit! Flowers should be developing on the peppers real soon. Fruit set is beginning on the tomatoes. Meanwhile, front yard annuals are looking hot 🌱


Might be a Copestylum mexicanum (Mexican cactus fly). If so, it is fittingly on a cultivated California wild rose flower.

