Anybody home? and other miscellany

A friend and I took a walk this morning, and we ran across the biggest critter-tunnel I’ve ever seen around here. It looks fairly fresh, but the dogs ignored it, so probably it’s not currently being used–or at least, it wasn’t currently occupied. But we were wondering what dug it–maybe a coyote?

If you set your mental scale just right, it looks like the front door of a hobbit house, or maybe something from Wind In The Willows.

The oaks are in full bloom. I know, who knew oaks bloomed. But they do–it’s just that the blossoms are kind of a yellowy-green, so unless you look, you might not realize they’re there. It happens every year, but I’ve never seen the trees this heavily laden. We were speculating that it might be because of the dry year–plants often do an extra push to reproduce when stressed.

This first picture gives an idea of how the trees look and how thick the blossoms are. The yellowy bits are the flowers; the darker green is leaves.

This next picture shows a close-up of a blossom drape. (I don’t know what else to call them–I’m sure there’s some technical name for such botanical phenomena, but I don’t know what it might be.)

And of course, there has to be a picture of a dog. This is the girl again. She has a real talent for sneaking into my pictures. At the time I was intent on trying to capture the 3D effect of looking through the tree to the bush in the background, so I wasn’t even aware that she was in it until I got home and was reviewing the morning’s take.