Dear All, We had our first rain since June a couple of nights ago. It was only a quarter of a inch (.0635 mm?) but still welcome as everything is so dusty and dry and living in the forest so to speak there is fire danger until we have some good rains. I've been enjoying the last of my Nerines and first of my Crocuses and Oxalis. Crocus tournefortii is wonderful at the moment with its gorgeous long orange stigma branches. I get tempted to take its picture every day. And yesterday Crocus niveus opened. It is one of my favorites. I also have one pot of unnamed Crocus blooming since the birds have already stolen the tag. Perhaps I'll figure it out from the process of elimination but there are both purple and white flowers in the pot and I don't remember that before. Last year the jays had a really high success rate in planting tan oak acorns in my bulb pots. There must have been 30 or 40 that came up and when I was repotting only 3-5 that didn't make it. I'd be thrilled with such success with my bulb seeds. Do you suppose they take the tags out when they plant so they can remember where they planted? As usual the Oxalis are gorgeous this time of year with our finally warm days. There are bright pinks, dazzling yellows that are hard to photograph, apricot colors and a host of interesting leaves and more coming up every day. Yesterday I was very surprised to see a Babiana in bloom. I didn't think any of my Babianas bloom in the fall. None ever have before. This one looks like Babiana vanzyliae which is what it is supposed to be on the tag. We saw that blooming in Nieuwoudtville in August and the Color Encyclopedia lists it as blooming August-September. Last year it bloomed in February which would be right. Perhaps it thought our summer felt like winter? Moraea polystachya is now blooming in two places in my garden and will be blooming for another three months at least depending on when it gets really cold and wet. I watched a bee pollinate one flower and then crawl all over an unopened bud trying to find the way in. It is such a satisfactory plant when it blooms reliably which mine finally are in pots in my raised beds as I don't think the soil dries out quite so much there as it does in the ground. The ones I planted out I'm lucky to see again. I have a number of exquisite small pink Gladiolus species in bloom (G. brevifolius and G. martleyi) and there is a late spike of G. monticola starting. The first flower of that was in July. And there are still more Gladiolus carmineus opening here and there even though there are seed pods now on some of the earlier plants and the long leaves have appeared on those plants too. Mary Sue Mary Sue Ittner California's North Coast Wet mild winters with occasional frost Dry mild summers