The Yosemite Vegas Reading and Fitness Plan

Next month, the Mister and I are hitting Yosemite, a place I love and look forward to returning to, and Las Vegas, a place I have never been and am prejudiced against, on the same trip.*

Besides general proximity, what do these places have in common?
I need to be ready for them, that's what!
I plan on being in Half Dome Hiking shape and of a shape in which I can wear a little dress to dinner at a Thomas Keller restaurant.
I also plan on reading or viewing your favorite Yosemite, Las Vegas, or Utah outdoors books and movies to mentally prepare myself.  John Muir.  Hunter S. Thompson.  Anthony Bourdain.  Who else?

So, for my birthday (Sunday, May 19th. I am totally shameless with the reminders), I want fitness or diet suggestions (crazy accepted, although I probably won't follow them) and Yosemite Vegas suggestions.
Viva Le Cirque de Sierra!

*Thanks to generosity and craziness of parents, Dianthus and Aster will be riding the train from Denver to Yosemite while the Mister and I drive via Vegas.

Iris, Peonies and the Buttons of the Unwed

This image from April 2, 2012.

Our front (north facing) cottage garden is overrun with bachelor buttons at the moment.  The last tulip there is fading, the irises opened this morning and some cool alliums are in full bloom.Iris along the east facing wall started blooming Monday, almost a full week after the iris along the south facing wall started blooming.  Our first peony opened along the south facing wall yesterday (May 7).  In the north cottage garden, no peonies will bloom this year, but nine (yes NINE) peony plants are up.*

*I purchased bare root peonies several times last year, along with transplanting fragments of an unhappy plant, all with no apparent success.  So I planted more.  It turns out the smart plants were just waiting for it not to be last year.

Kites and Crocus

Happy May Day!
The kites rode the hot winds back to town yesterday, just in time to feel the colds winds blowing today and the potential freeze tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the second wave of tulips just lost their petals in the hot wind, the north side lilac never bloomed, the south-facing bearded iris are blooming, we planted vegetables and a peach over the weekend, and I'm getting around to posting a crocus image from early March.

Trains, Plows and Flying Frogs

My brave parents and parents-in-law independently decided they needed to spend some time alone with Dianthus this month.  He flew to Colorado and spent six nights there, was home for a week, and then drove to Branson, Missouri for a few days.  Much to most everyone's surprise, he was apparently a delightful individual for most of it, and, despite escaping during nap time in Colorado and staying up all night to check on the status of the ice cubes in Branson, all adults claim they would do it again.

At this end, it was also informative to learn that we can take Aster out to dinner if his brother is not around.

For those of you with one child believing that you now understand how shockingly exhausting a child can be, so you are somehow prepared for the second,  ignore how cute the kid is in these photos and take heed: the increased effort is exponential, not additive. 

"Maybe wear something with flowers?"

I asked Dianthus to approve my outfit before walking to church (in gale force winds) yesterday. He suggested that I wear something with flowers.  I'm not sure if he's caught on to Floraganza, he thinks that church outfits should all be Easter dresses, like those pictured here, or if he just didn't like my drab brown outfit.   In any case, it is pleasant (?) to know that someone thinks I should be wearing more flowers.  Other images are from the great Easter egg hunt (March 31) and the Easter bouquet that melded store bought and home grown flowers.

Why the tulips were fleeting

After 80 degrees on Monday and Tuesday, this was Wednesday.
Coloradans, you are not alone in experiencing dramatic shifts in weather.

Tulip Timing Tendencies (another book I'm not going to write)

A clump of bright red tulips are a showstopper in my front yard at the moment*.  They are flanked by some daffodils and grape hyacinths in full bloom and some pink hyacinths not far away.  The pale little violets throughout the yard are fading, but if you admire at just the right angle, the larger violets out now make a great backdrop for the tulips.
I spent 38 hours at my parents' house in Colorado over the weekend.  Their bright blue Siberian Squill are marching through the mulch, their grape and regular pink and purple hyacinths are in full bloom, the daffodils are just starting and the regular tulips are weeks away.
Every year such comparisons make me wonder why I've never found a comprehensive list of flowering triggers.
Some plants are very predictable followers of daytime temperature.  Other nighttime temperature.  For others, it must be day length only.  The difference might explain why, if Denver trees are three to four weeks "behind" Oklahoma trees, the grape hyacinths can be exactly the same stage.
 I picked the last of my purple regular hyacinths on March 16.  The pink ones opened yesterday.
When I lived in Scotland, I was shocked that the daffodils emerged in January but didn't bloom until late March, at about the same time they bloomed in Denver, even though they'd only been out of the ground for a week or so in Denver.  This spring, my established daffodils were up in January and bloomed in March.  The newly planted ones emerged late in March and are blooming now.  Microclimate (brick east facing wall vs. under a tree), genetics or age of plant?
So this book I want to write (more precisely, this book I want to have written) is one that lists flowering and leafing triggers for all plants.  Are they controlled by high temperature, low temperature, day length, phase of the moon or water, and in what combination? If that's too ambitious I'd be satisfied with all temperate garden plants to start with.

In the meantime, I'll keep compiling reports. In Weatherford, the red-buds are just opening and the crabapples are starting.  The Bradford Pears are done.  Silver maples have the first helicopters but have not started dropping them.  Our currant smells great and was buzzing on the warm day yesterday.  Lilacs had obviously swollen leaf buds on March 16 and stalled at that stage for three weeks.  Oaks started leafing yesterday while the walnuts and pecans show no signs of life.  Freedom lawns are purple with stork's bill (the lamium having past) and ours contains bonus "scrambled eggs" (a corydalis) and some white lithospermum-like plant (I have not keyed it but I am "confident in its boragniaciousness").
In Oklahoma City on Sunday red buds were in full bloom and some of the Bradford pears were in full leaf.
My parent's front frittalaria was fantastic, but the back still a long way away.

*What is likely to be a very fleeting moment-- they were closed buds over the weekend.  One day of 80 degree wind yesterday left many over-open and vulnerable to the incoming storm.