Tiny Tuesday : : Vetch

The humble hairy vetch (vicia villosa) is blooming now. It climbs up the grasses and grabs stems with it's proliferating tendrils. It is a legume and, I think related to the lupin and even the fava bean which  can be planted as a cover crop to fix nitrogen in the soil. The vetch, however doesn't wait to be planted but grows rampantly wherever it can get a toehold. (So to speak). I like the way the individual flowers on this stem go from white to purple and bottom to top as they age. Each tiny flowerlet is about 5cm long....

It was looking particularly pretty, even orderly, as we took our walk this morning. The plant which can have stems up to five feet long was sprawling all over the shady grass lined trail, and I could hear the rattlesnake grass seed pods popping open in the rapidly warming air. When the vetch finishes blooming it will form pea-like seed pods which in their turn will burst and start the process all over again.

Ozzie was well rejuvenated by a dip in the rather murky looking creek. Dog walking in the country in the warm weather can be an adventure between avoiding the toxic algae which sometimes grows in the lake and the drying foxtails growing next to the trail. As Ozzie gets older and the actual walks grow shorter, our discussions about where to take him grow longer. 

After complaining about rain and cold for most of the month, I can now report that it is now 86ºF, almost 30ºC. I like it, and I don't think anybody who complained endlessly about the rain dares complain about the heat just yet. We could have had a few temperate, spring-like days for a transition, but in these perilous times it seems nothing is gentle.