New Spring Snapshots of Burbank's Farm

I had three hours to kill yesterday in-between taking my mother grocery shopping and working on a friend's computer so, as usual, I stopped by Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol for a couple of hours...

Photo (above): A path meanders underneath Luther Burbank's sorbus (aka, "mountain ash", aka "Jerusalem pear") trees at Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol, Sonoma County, Northern California.

While the new parking lot hasn't advanced any further than the last time I saw it -- due to the copious amounts of rain we've been getting here in Northern California of late --some of the trees and wildflowers have been blooming out and I thought you might like to see them:

One thing I noticed prominently on the landscape were the flowers of the "red maids" (a member of the "portulaca" or "moss rose" family). These are native wildflowers that seem to be having a banner year in 2009:

Alongside them are some tiny, white wildflowers which appear to me to be members of the delicte "baby's breath" or gypsophilia family:

I'm going to have to do some more research to find out exactly what these pretty, little white flowers are! 

One of the most prolific-bearing plum trees I've ever seen is located on the Farm and it was just beginning to bloom its delicate, fruit-bearing, white flowers:

The angle of the sun yesterday afternoon was especially complimentary to the bark of the Chinese quince trees, I thought:

 I always call the Chinese quince trees the "giraffe trees" because the mottling of the bark on the trunks of the trees looks very much to me like the spots on giraffes...

I noticed the metal windmill (or "whirlygig") at the Farm that was installed as a "gopher deterent" and thought it might look cool with the cloudy sky and sun behind it:

One of the most pervasive wild (or, rather, "feral") flowers in Sonoma County here in Northern California is the yellow-flowered oaxalis (a member of the "sorrel" family) of which the Farm has many...

Here are some blooming under a walnut tree:

And here's a close-up of a couple of the blooms:

So, while spring is not yet completely "sprung" here in Sonoma County, from these photos of Burbank's Farm yesterday, you can tell it's definitely on its way!