April 30, 2007

Right now, the tiny oak leaves look like flowers.

They're pink and less than a half inch long.

Emerging oak leaves

Look closer, and they seem like sugar-coated candy:

Emerging oak leaves

Who can picture them all brown and leathery? I can. There are still so many of last year's oak leaves strewn about the yard.

8 comments:

AlphaLiberal said...

Wow. I love oaks but ususally admire their bent but balanced character.

What a beautiful plant! Thanks, Ann!

Beth said...

I'm enjoying your spring photos. The flora in your part of the country is different from what I'm seeing down here right now. Our oaks are nothing like this one.

Here's a bit of good news for our oaks: last year, the spring after Katrina, many of the oaks in the flooded areas of the city and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast were bare or sparsely leafy. They look much better this year.

Eli Blake said...

Beth:

That is good news.

I just wonder why they are building the levees exactly back as they were before Katrina. I mean, if for example the wind blows the weather vane off of my roof then if I get another weather vane, it will be a better one that goes on more securely, otherwise I'm just marking time before it happens again. Same thing with the levees, IMO.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

"Plant your corn when the oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear."

Anonymous said...

I love baby oak leaves.

The catkins are doing their thing now, too.

Meade said...

"There are still so many of last year's oak leaves strewn about the yard."

What, you mean you didn't rake, bag, and send them off to the landfill back in November?

R C Dean said...

When I lived in Madison, this may have been my favorite week of the year - the daffodils and tulips were working it, of course, but the oak trees were covered by the palest mist of green as their leaves started to come out. After a Wisconsin winter, spring is to be savored!

Beth said...

Eli, we're wondering that, too! The Army Corps of Engineers are in charge, and every day, there's a news story that can be summarized as "WTF???" about the ACE.

Their explanation is that while the levees are no higher and the metal sheeting no deeper, that they have installed gates and pumps at the ends of three of the levees, at the lake. The gates will be closed and the pumps will move water into the lake when the lake's storm surge hits a certain level. One of those gate/pump contraptions is right across from the building where I have an office.

The pumps were supplied by MWI, a company Jeb Bush used to work for, and which gives big bucks to the GOP. The pumps were determined to be shoddy upon installation last year, and have had to be retooled. They failed to come on last year during a big rain and lots of homes that were in the process of being restored were flooded again. Yay for cronyism. This blog follows the story capably:

righthandthief.blogspot.com

So, I guess we'll see if those pumps and gates work. One way or other, there'll be flooding just from closing the gates. How much is the big question. We've been flooding for hundreds of years, without disaster. A recent geological survey shows that more than half of the city is actually above sea level, so that explains why water has been channeled and pumped out to the lake effectively over the years.