The past several Springs have been cold and rainy, to say the least. What used to be a nice season for bike riding and photography turned into cold, wet, and often frosty, miserable times of the year.
Not so this year. Well -- at least it is looking that way. As I write this, it is April 5th, and it is green outside. And I'm not just talking about the evergreen trees that are everywhere, I'm talking about the other trees and plants -- the deciduous ones.
They usually -- during a normal year, turn the nearby hills green by April 5th. Why that is, I don't know. Probably it has something to do with the latitude here (47.5 degrees N) and maybe the local terrain. When I took Meteorology 101 at the University -- a course I amazingly passed -- one thing they told us about was "micro-climates". In other words, even in a given locale there may be small areas where it's usually colder, wetter, drier, etc.
These micro-climates can be as extensive as the Rogue-Umpqua, relatively arid, Garry Oak micro-climate that one sees near Roseburg and Medford, Oregon, where the weather is drier and hotter than any other parts of Western Washington and Western Oregon. A micro-climate can also be as small as the shadier side of a neighborhood, if that neighborhood is in a valley or near a big hill.
In my own neighborhood there are several blocks where it's frostier at night, and if I ride my bike at night I have to be careful about the sheen of black ice -- that section of the neighborhood is affected by moisture from the nearby River. And apparently when it's freezing out, that moisture from the River frosts the streets and waysides in that part of the neighborhood -- where in my section there may be some frost, but the streets are clear.
My section of the neighborhood also sees a bit more sun, being further from the hills than the streets just a 300-400 yards / meters south of me.
Also, I've noticed that certain birds hang out in other parts of the neighborhood that don't hang out at my block. Whether this has anything to do with micro-climate or not is a good guess. Brewer's Blackbirds (the normal, small kind of blackbird) like to hang out in a section of the neighborhood about 4 blocks away. On my street it's only Redwing Blackbirds -- which are cool, because of their musical konk-a-reeeee call.
I used to have a lot of house sparrows visit my yard. They would daisy chain it from the golf course, flying tree to tree, until they got to my yard where I was feeding them.
Then a lady down the street, who was paranoid about volunteer trees and blackberries, bitched to the city about the plethora of greenery on the berm near the noise-cancelling retaining wall that's maybe 50-60 yards from my house. The city mowed down the blackberries (which protected the birds and rabbits) and wiped out all the small trees that the house sparrows used to stop at when making their way to my yard.
My house sparrow visitors went from maybe 150 or so in an afternoon to zero.
Some people seem to have a real hatred for nature, I guess.
That said, the neighborhood pigeons hang out the next street over, and down about half a block. And there are a couple other spots in the neighborhood where they hang out, roosting on the powerlines. Yet they never hang out on my street. In fact, I can't recall ever seeing them on my block, or even within 300 yards/meters of my place.
Anyway, this year -- Spring 2024 -- is surprisingly back to normal. The cherry trees are blossoming -- last year they blossomed in May. And surprisingly -- after maybe 5 springs where the trees were one week, then two weeks, then four weeks late -- the hills are already turning green. Last year they didn't green out until May 5th - 8th or so. This year, they are right on time!
Hopefully, that means that the neighborhood rhododendrons will bloom in late April / early May, and I can get some pictures. Last year they bloomed oddly -- some bushes had blooms when others were still budding, and the blooms looked sickly compared to the mid-2010's, when I was taking pictures of them and posting them on my blog here.
So posted here through this blog article are a few pics of leaves budding. Dull? Yes, but it's nice to see them happening when they should: during the first week of April.
Not much else is happening that I didn't cover in my last article.
A FORGOTTEN BAND -- THE INDIANS. 1993.
Here's a couple vids, from a band I loved from the 1990's, and like many great bands that I loved during that decade (Engines of Aggression, Blinker The Star, Warrior Soul, Truly, Mantissa, Econoline Crush, etc.) they put out one album which was awesome, and then got dropped. Sucks when that happens.
This band is one that is largely forgotten, but the music they put out was so remarkable that they should have been huge. The band? The Indians. Driven mostly by one woman's creativity and songwriting, and including the amazing guitar work of a relatively unknown Italian axe-slinger, the Indians put out a couple videos and just one CD. Then they disappeared into the ether.
The Indians were a quartet headed by female singer Angelique Bianca, who wrote most of the songs, sang them, and played acoustic and some electric guitar on them. Angelique definitely had the gift. She still makes music, and has some videos on her own YT channel, which you can find here. A few of the newer tracks she made in the 2010's are really good.:
Here is my favorite song by The Indians, Believe. It is a track that only could have been recorded and released in the 1990s. The recording is massive, and wonderfully done. Back in the 1990's, record companies were willing to put money into breaking acts, and this CD "Indianism", from which this track is taken, is an example of this. And why did they put the money into the recordings? Because a) the songs, and the band, were good. And b) because back then, record companies had the money to put into breaking acts.
The musicianship The Indians displayed was outstanding. The lead guitar player was an Italian guy named "Zeb", and the bass was played by UK bassist Chris Wilson, and the drummer (who posted the Look Up To The Sky MTV video below) was DJ Danny G. A Los Angeles native, Angelique Bianca spent some time in the UK in 1989, which was where she met Chris Wilson. The two spent time working on music, later to come to the US, found drummer Danny G, and then got a recording contract as The Indians.
And the recording itself? It's larger than life.
Anyway, here is a "link" to a video of Believe, which I guess Blogger can't play directly, hence the "Video Unavailable" panel -- but if you click on the link inside the panel, it will immediately take you to the one on YouTube (I tried it, it works). Both Blogger and YT are owned by the same corporation. Go figure.:
Here is a link to the CD track on YouTube, which Blogger's searcher couldn't find.:
And here is Look Up To The Sky, a 7 minute dreamtrip, rock track, with excellent guitars, cool lyrics, great singing, and psycho-flutes at the ending (actually a Mellotron on flute setting). This song was on the movie Kalifornia. I've never seen Kalifornia, but I was told by a workmate in the radio business that the movie was "weird". I'll take his word on that one.
Here's a link to the actual MTV video The Indians put out for Look Up To The Sky, with a few short clips included from the movie Kalifornia. The recording is good quality, and it's a radio edit. Sadly, it didn't get much play on MTV (if any), or any airplay on the radio that I'm aware of. I know that where I worked the CD was unused. I ended up with a copy of it.
If you get the chance, check out the entire Indianism album on YouTube. It's well worth it. The entire CD is on there, in high quality. Take a journey back to 1993. It was a good time back then, really. Especially for music.
Until next time, my friends,
Peace.
C.C., April 5th 2024
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