Cherry, lilac, fuchsia, salvia, and snapdragon—maybe

As I said a couple of weeks ago, we had an amazingly mild winter here in Seattle, a disturbingly mild winter. And spring. As predicted, the cherry tree exploded into puffs of pink. This was taken a few days ago:

Blossom is about to start falling. In a week, the lawn will be carpet of pink flowers.

Meanwhile, our two lilac trees (okay, one is ours, and one is the back neighbour’s, but it grows over our deck) are also getting in on the act. The one that grows over the kitchen deck is paler than the one that in the secret little north garden (not pictured) but it makes the deck smell heavenly.

Also on the kitchen deck, we have tiny yellow flowers that come every year but whose name I can never remember. The geranium—an annual, not the perennial kind; it was not supposed to survive the winter—has grown huge, massive leaves reaching everywhere, but no sign of flower buds.

However, we have our very first fuchsia buds swelling, which delights Kelley—she loves fuchsia (we have so much fuchsia, fuchsia of every kind, on the kitchen deck, the back deck, the front flower bed…)

And two tiny flowers growing among our Hot Lips salvia—little red pinpricks among the green:

And then there’s these, which I’m really, really hoping are snapdragons—I love snapdragons—but which I suppose could also be some kind of salvia:

Meanwhile, on the back deck: nothing. Just a few green leaves growing here and there in pots. We’ll see what transpires…

Today in Labor History, April 16, 1943: Albert Hoffman accidentally discovered the hallucinogenic effects of LSD on this day. And forever after, working-class people could afford to take inexpensive trips without ever leaving their homes. Hoffman, who was a chemist at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, first synthesized LSD in1938. He set the drug aside for five years, before accidentally ingesting some on this date in 1943. Three days later, April 19, he deliberately ingested 250 micrograms of LSD, believing this tiny dosage would be barely, if at all, noticeable. Turns out, this is a pretty strong dose. He watched people morph into weird creatures, office furniture become “alive,” and he felt like he was possessed by otherworldly forces. He tried to ride his bicycle home, to safety, but things just got weirder. April 19 is now known as “Bicycle Day,” in commemoration of the first deliberate LSD trip.

He also named and synthesized the principal psychedelic chemicals psilocybin and psilocin, found in psilocybin mushrooms. And in 1929 he discovered the structure of chitin, the polysaccharide found in the cell walls of fungi, and in the shells of arthropods, like shrimp, crabs, spiders and insects, and in the beaks and radula of mollusks, like snails and octopi. He wrote over 100 scientific articles in his lifetime, and the book: LSD: Mein Sorgenkind (LSD: My Problem Child). In 1962, he traveled to Mexico to obtain samples of Salvia divinorum, but was never able to isolate the psychoactive alkaloids. He also discovered a close relative of LSD in Morning Glory seeds. In an interview just before his 100th birthday, Hofmann called LSD "medicine for the soul." Angered by its worldwide legal bans, he said argued that it had been used successfully for ten years in psychoanalysis prior to its U.S. prohibition. He also criticized its “misuse” by the counterculture of the 1960s.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #LSD #psychedelic #AlbertHoffman #chemistry #mushrooms #psilocybin #sandoz #salvia

I repeat:

Naomi Fraga is a hero.

#deathvalley
#botany
#limiteddistribution
#salvia

https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2026/04/01/nx-s1-5749446/botanist-search-seeds-rare-death-valley-sage

Salvia “Hot Lips” (Hot Lips Sage)

This has become very popular around me here in Los Angeles. I now see it almost everywhere, but it was not that prevalent when we first planted ours. “Hot Lips” seems tolove our garden and climate, threatening to grow out of control without regular pruning.

http://welchwrite.com/agn/2026/02/08/salvia-hot-lips-hot-lips-sage-photography/

Follow My Photos on Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/p/douglaswelch/926248792703547121

#sage #salvia #garden #gardening #flowers #plant #photography