After a cold and windy spring, we just had the first couple WARM days.
I love watching and listening to the insects pollinating the fruit trees.
So many insects pollinated the plum tree:
The hummingbird moths feed in the evening on the nectarine flowers (slow motion):
I saw several black insects pollinating the plum, are they bees?
Black insect pollinating plum
Sunset in the orchard garden:
Sunset: Nectarine with hummingbird moth
Joshua Tree flower forming:
Flower forming on Joshua Tree
It is such a joy to see the thousands of Joshua Tree flowers!
Due to the severe drought, it’s been several years since I smelled the unique scent of the Joshua Tree flowers. Some people say they stink, maybe it’s an acquired taste. I love the scents of the Joshies and the fruit trees and the sounds of the insects pollinating.
Blooming nectarine with flowering Joshua Trees
Fortunately, we got several rains this winter and we might even get wildflowers and cactus blooms.
After almost 2 years with essentially no rain, the desert was bone dry.
As I’m working on this post, we’re in the middle of a rainstorm.
The only surviving African sumac was blowing in the wind during a dust storm this afternoon:
African sumac blowing in the wind
It’s too cold for African sumacs here, but this one survived because it was sheltered by a small greenhouse on the north.
On the right is the plum tree that had been so nicely pollinated. Last year we lost ALL plums to weather. I wonder whether all the little plums got blown off by the storm:
Orchard garden during dust storm
Only locals would know that it’s so dusty you can’t even see the cliffs. You see the cliffs in the nectarine sunset picture above.
It’s a good idea to get many different kind of fruit trees as they’ll bloom at different times and it’s unlikely that you’ll lose your entire harvest due to bad weather.
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