Ceanothus blooms on Kas-ele-wu like wisps of morning fog, high above El Escorpion Creek.

No Superbloom, thank Persephone. (Whew! Last year was exhausting.) This year, JUST bloom.

We’ve been dry this winter, but we’ve been cold, which helps preserve the moisture we got. Since few roots but oaks’ in chaparral go deeper than a foot, we’ve got a fairly gay spring going. [That being said, we’re set for a soaking this week, and the official rainy season ain’t over yet.]

Here’s pix from the West Valley: from El Escorpion and Chatsworth, where Kas-ele-wu and the Santa Susana Stagecoach Road, respectively, set off the blossoms. First, the Coast Fiddlenecks — to see this golden string section rising from the rye is a concerto grosso for the soul.

Then the oaks. Q. agrifolia. The males trail the beguiling catkins.

With the oaks, in the bottom of the creeks, are arroyo willows, also right in time to “puff” their catkins.

Up, up, up, past the Russell Hotel….

Below, some healthy Yerba santa — holy herb, a sage. Few herbs are more respected in native medicine. I use the aromatic leaves to smudge. Nor frankincense, nor cedar, nor pinyon, smells sweeter.

Below, blue dicks. These are everywhere in the meadows on southerly slopes.

They grow from bulbs, which, when grubbed up, were a potent food source in Indian lore, called cacomites. The myth ‘Coyote and His Sons’ begins:

“Coyote was married to Frog, and they had sixteen children. He was very lazy and very stingy, and never made any effort to provide for his children. He would eat up whatever food was in the house. The children would go and dig cacomites and bring them home, and Coyote ate them all up. He ate so many cacomites he began to have diarrhea, and the children would see cacomites in his excrement. One little coyote would say to another, “Look, that is one of the cacomites that I dug up! “How do you know?” the other would ask. “It has my mark on it!”

— Chumash Informant Juan de Jesus Justo; as told to Harrington. ‘December’s Child,’ Blackburn (1975)

“Give me all the lupines you’ve got!” Hmmm, well, pretty paltry this year, I’m afraid.

I must say there’s better lupines behind chain-link in the Hollywood Freeway off-ramp:

But back in the West Valley, there were some fine mugworts to greet.

“Ice plant” is overused by CalTrans on the freeways; but it’s clear why they plant this showy succulent en masse. Here, two slightly displaced specimens; they prefer the coast. But the West Valley gets Malibu breezes, and the climate’s changing fast, so call them pioneers.

Still, as sweet as this display is, and as easy on the olfactory as is the chaparral, nothing beats the intoxicating perfume of an orange grove in full bloom. One of the last private ones in the Valley just happens to be on the last block — or first block — of Lassen Avenue in Chatsworth as it morphs into — or out of — the Old Stagecoach Road. The View received the aroma of a full acre of blooming Valenicas as if it were a knock on the head. This, and the droning buzz of the bees, induced the pleasant stupefaction known as “Spring Fever.” I can’t imagine what the fragrance must have been like when the whole Valley was nothing but orange groves for miles and miles.