Tiny Tuesday. : : Plum Blossoms

There is something about plum blossoms,  umé  in Japanese, which are the ultimate harbingers of spring in my mind. They bloom at least a month ahead of the more showy sakurai,  cherry blossoms, and are much more delicate. They often get beaten to a pulp by rain, which hasn't finished yet. I fear that is what will happen with these, as another round of storms is due here tomorrow.

 I hope the rain holds off until the tree guy comes tomorrow to cut up the tree that fell down in the last round. At least we've had a few days of blue skies and warm temperatures to clear downed trees and mud. There have been more than the usual number of trucks out with guys looking down holes in the middle of the street or on top of cherry pickers peering into the crowns of trees....

I feel for the people who were evacuated from the path of the  Oroville dam (about 100 miles northeast of us) when the emergency spillway developed a hole and threatened catastrophic floods. Although the gushing hole was visible for miles, people were being told as recently as a couple of weeks ago that it was safe. Then they were given an hour to evacuate. Now it develops that the state and the federal government have known about the problems with the dam since 2005 when a coalition of environmental groups brought their attention to the problem, but chose to ignore it because nobody wanted to pay for repairs. Water politics in California, documented in books and films,* have always been a convoluted mess. As usual, the people will pay for the government's malfeasance one way or another...Here's the latest article on the subject from the Washington Post in case you would like to read yet another article about inept government.

*Cadillac Desert Mark Reiser
*"Chinatown" a film with Jack Nicholson