This morning the runners in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon are taking to the streets down the hill from me. It’s overcast and cool enough, for sure. But somehow I’m not feeling motivated to run 26 miles…
The locals have a name for these two months when the morning cloud cover blots out the sun: May gray and June gloom. It makes for a slow easing into summer, good running weather, and prolongs the season when you can hope to put plants in the ground and not have to worry too much about keeping them watered.
Yesterday was extra-cool, and the thick marine layer of clouds made for a heavy drizzle most of the day. For me the sight of raindrops on plants is rare enough that I grabbed the camera.
Are photos of raindrops and dewdrops on plants and flowers cliches? Dunno. Even if they are, I think there’s something so satisfying about them that people need to keep taking them.
Below are all the photos I took in smaller gallery format. Going left to right: images 1-4, flowers of sacred datura, Datura wrightii; 5-6, leaves on tower of jewels, Echium wildpretii; 7, spiderweb on California fuchsia, Epilobium canum ‘Catalina’; 8, flowers of deerweed, Lotus scoparius.
I’m very much in favor of flowers and foliage with raindrops on them. Especially now that the rains have basically ended for the year. Wouldn’t have expected it to rain in San Diego. Also, I am pro-datura photos. Such an amazing flower, such nice photos. I can’t wait until ours bloom.
Amazing! Love the photos! My husband was in San Diego last week and told me about the drizzle when I picked him up from the airport. Hard to believe. I sure hope we get a little wet stuff up here…
Ryan, I’m still trying to figure out how to use daturas in a native landscape without people asking, “Who snuck that tropical plant in there?” They just don’t look like anything else in the wilds. Yours should be blooming before too long…
Town Mouse, according to the official tally for yesterday we got .04 inches of moisture down here yesterday, the first precipitation in two months. The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t tell visitors about our May gray.
Shades of Georgia O’Keefe?
Oh, I don’t care if they are cliche or not, they are too delightful not to perpetuate. Plus, on those white blossoms, the droplets help to define the space, which might otherwise just appear as a big empty void in the photo.
Funny, I’d never heard of this before, but this is the second time in 24 hours I’ve heard of this June Gloom of which you speak.
I found a white datura with a purple throat blooming just down the road at the side of the harbor last August, but when I went back to harvest seeds a few days later, it had been mowed (mown?) down. I’ll be watching for some this year and hopefully will have better luck.
James, I’m sure O’Keefe is in there somewhere. And maybe Edward Weston’s Pepper #30 (in the 1st datura).
Greg, let me know if you can’t get to your local plants sooner this year. I’ll share some seeds. I’d guess mine is a different species, but It’d at least work as an annual for you if you were to start it indoors.