Table Mountain, Oroville

Yesterday, Susan and I took the dogs to Table Mountain in Oroville. It was only a half-hour drive, and the mountain is famous for its spring wildflower displays. We went a little early in the season, but the array of flowers was already impressive. Even more impressive to me, however, was the intense greennness of the wooded areas we drove through on the east side of the mountain. Tragically, I didn't get any pictures of these areas, because there weren't many good places to stop the car, and because I thought I could take some on the way back instead. But on the way back we went around the west side of the mountain, which turned out not to be half as beautiful a drive. Oh well. Even if I had gotten pictures, it would be impossible for you to look at the pictures without concluding that I must have just quintupled the saturation of the color green to make the pictures artificially greener than the actual place. The actual place was the greenest place I've ever seen. I'd had no idea that oak trees, which are the dominant tree all over the Sacramento Valley but which are normally seen in various muted shades from olive green to grey-green, could be so bright a green. It was amazing. I wonder whether they're still as green later in the season, or just for a few weeks in spring.

At least I got pictures of the top of the mountain, which was less green but contained the largest number of wildflowers. Here is Susan with the dogs, sitting amid native annual sky lupines (the blue flowers: Lupinus nanus) and goldfields (the yellow flowers: Lasthenia californica).



( more pictures of Table Mountain )