As April begins

As April begins, there is good news. The flowers are starting to bloom on Electra Road. The poppies are lovely now, and the bush lupine should be fabulous in a week or two. A few phacelia are joining in, and the alders are leafing out in the green that simply shouts "Spring." It is a lovely place to drive, walk, or sit and watch the Mokelumne flow by. And the black phoebes that live at Electra year 'round will keep you company.

Then there is bad news. SPI is trying to abandon the local rail line -- the former home of the Amador Central Railroad. Once abandoned, rail lines do not come back -- ever. It would be a true tragedy for our community to lose that possible rail link to points west.

To make things worse, Amador County Transportation Commission staff say that part of the rail line should be abandoned to make way for a road through Martell! A road. Incredible. They say that if the Wicklow Way and Gold Rush projects are developed, building a new road through Martell on the rail line would save millions and help with local traffic. That might be true for a while -- but only until the next big project comes along and further clogs our roads.

Lousy subdivisions are one thing, but giving up a rail line for the traffic they will bring is the height of folly.

We need to join with the Amador Historical Society on this one and keep that rail line intact. Bad enough that SPI is clearcutting our forests. Now they want to strip us of our history, too.

Bloomin' crazy

Our home wildflowers are amazing now after a slow start. Yesterday and today, I saw all of the flowers listed below as well as some I haven't yet identified. Most are in our meadow or on its fringes:

• Four kinds of monkeyflowers: yellow, yellow/white, pink tubular, pink/purple/yellow

• Larkspur
• Meadowfoam
• Yellow broadeia (a tritelia)
• A blue broadeia
• Woodland star
• Wilding pinks (see April flower post)
• Milkweed
• Mallow

  

• Vetch
• Wild onions
• Yellow violets
• Madia, a yellow composite dominating the meadow

  

In bloom - update

Part of what I love about wildflowers is their unpredictability. Just when you think you know what should be in bloom where and when, the temperature or rainfall or combination of the two intervenes. Flowers bloom early, flowers bloom late, flowers barely show, blooms overlap. A rare plant will bloom on a road cut bank and you'll not see it again for ten years.

UC Digital Library photos and information on flowers and more

Monday, April 30

I drove down Highway 88 from Pine Grove to Jackson today and returned home up Shake Ridge Ridge. Have to say this is an excellent year for lupine, in spite of (because of?) the dry winter. The patches of common lupine -- I don't know the species -- are abundant and expansive. The yerba santa is blooming early on the S-curves outside Sutter Creek.

At home today . . .

• Four kinds of monkeyflowers
• Wilding pinks (petrorhagia dubia)
• Douglas meadowfoam
• Some clover, a few lupine, wildland stars
• Purple milkweed
• Lots of vetch

The Indian soap plant should bloom before long.

Monday, April 23, Shake Ridge Road east of Oneto Road and west of New Chicago - Quartz Mountain Road:

Indian pinks (silene) -- red ones, pink ones -- on the banks on the south side of the road. Pink flowers are pinks... red flowers are pinks ... I even saw a white pink the other day. Go figure. . .

April 21, on our property near Daffodil Hill

• A few lingering shooting stars
• Purple milkweed in bud
• Douglas meadowfoam in bud
• Yellow monkeyflowers
• Gold fields are fading
• Native clover
• Yellow violets
• Wild ginger (shown at right)
• White California lilac/deer brush (ceanothus)
• Woodland stars
  

April 20, "old" Hwy 49 btwn Amador City and Sutter Creek

• Chinese houses (shown at right)
• Fiddleneck

April 15, PG&E Road below Tiger Creek Afterbay

• Globe lilies (shown at right)
• Various lupines
  

A walk on Electra Road

Pete and I went for a nice walk today on Electra Road, along the Mokelumne River. We were out there last weekend, too. Aside from having to keep an eye out for traffic on the narrow road, it's a wonderful place to take a spring foothill river walk.

Electra's always beautiful, but in spring it's especially so. The leafing-out alder and willow stand in bright contrast to the deep blue-green river, and the flowers are fabulous.

Many more flowers were in bloom this week than last. We saw countless California poppies, three kinds of purple lupine, the first Chinese globe lilies, abundant scorpion flowers (phacelia), fringe pod, dudleya, Chinese houses (collinsia), fiddlenecks, popcorn flowers, a couple kinds of brodiaea, some yellow monkeyflowers, and the promise of more to come in the next few weeks.

In addition to the flowers, we watched a pair of common mergansers, a number of black phoebes, and numerous butterflies. Some we knew -- mourning cloaks, swallowtails -- some we didn't, but looked up later.

The mergansers, called "river chickens" by rafting guides, are interesting because the males and females look so different you could easily mistake them for different species.

The Electra run of the Mokelumne really is a "people's river," used by local residents as well as river lovers of all kinds. Today we saw groups having barbecues on the beach, folks watching the river flow by or soaking up the sun, walkers like us with dogs, families with kids, gold panners, teenagers, three cars full of people from Texas, three generations of guys fishing together, and a couple of whitewater kayakers.

Last week we met an entire family of South Asian-American children from Stockton, six in all, ranging in age from about eight to 21. It was their last day of spring break, and the eldest brother had taken everyone for a final day outside. As we left, they were standing side-by-side on the beach throwing rocks across the river -- girls in bright salwar kameez, boys in jeans and t-shirts, everyone barefoot, everyone happy.

The Electra run is also one of the premier kayak training runs in central California. Across the country, cities are building kayak parks to attract tourists and provide recreation for residents, but we have the real thing just south of Jackson.

The Bureau of Land Management may soon recommend the Electra run for inclusion in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers system. Protecting this section of river for future generations means that on beautiful spring days like today, families, kids, anglers, couples, tourists, wildflower watchers, birders, and paddlers can continue to appreciate the magic our local river has to offer.

I cannot imagine life here without it.

You can look up the flowers listed here -- and many more -- at the UC Digital Library.