It's A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

I took a little walk, going downhill, and in the first two blocks this is a little of what I saw. Do click the pictures to enlarge and see details.

This is the edge of my yard, with sweet rocket growing out of the cracks of the retaining wall.

In the upper left hand corner are dandelion puff balls.




And here we are, two blocks down, and here the sweet rocket has taken over the entire hillside. There are also some buttercups and other flowers. The stairs that you see are the bottom third of a staircase going up to a house. One day a few years ago the driver stopped the Care-A-Van just in front of the stairs so we could watch a mother bear and three cubs climb them. We seldom see three cubs, and it was kind of a magic moment. There were several neighbors and some tourists standing watching, which was what alerted us to the fact that something worth seeing was there.

And here we have flowers someone actually planted. The red ones are arctic poppies, one of my favorites. They start out with little fuzzy green caps that split and let the color show through and end all flowsy and blown -- like a lady of the evening who has been practiciing her profession for too long.