Usually, we’re up in the forest for the trees, and those are certainly lovely.

But it’s spring in the forest, and it has flowers, too. We even saw a cineraria. The native garden is finally all green. The pink-flowered currant is over, but a scattering of golden california poppies punctuate the green of the grass; there’s some pink checkerbloom (also called wild hollyhock); some lupin is flowering, and so is the ceanothus. And little patches of luminous yellow oxalis.

A sunny day, and so there were butterflies. Anise Swallowtails air-dancing, and this time it may have been a mating dance rather than a territorial one, though we couldn’t be sure. A female cabbage white (Thanks, Art Shapiro of UC Davis for the identification) browsed the oxalis. There were some red butterflies, too, but they didn’t settle long enough for an identification – could have been Tortoiseshells.

Little patches of forget-me-nots are blooming along the trails, but the loveliest beds of them lined the top end of Nike Road (which connects the Aldea campus to the Native Garden). Light-blue drifts of flowers, blooming right under the eucalyptus (where, the myth has it, nothing grows).

Oh, and no Garlon or Roundup. (Thanks, UCSF.)