feathers and flowers

Orioles come every summer, and I consider myself lucky to catch a quick glimpse of one whizzing by or high over head, but it's been several years since I've seen one, and I don't know their call to at least know they're around. But on Wednesday my co-worker said she'd had an oriole at her feeder, eating the black sunflower seeds -  that was unusual! So she put half an orange in the suet feeder for them because they really like sweet things.

Well - the next day while making my bed I looked over to my neighbor's apple tree, and there was an oriole, happily jumping from branch to branch, picking at the apple blossoms! He was there quite a while. I called Betty immediately. She emailed me later to say that right after my call she had seven of them in her tree! She got a photo of two, and sent it along. This is exciting; maybe it's a good year for them. (But I wonder if my neighbor's tree will still produce apples, hmmm.)

The cherry tree has been blooming for a week, through the mostly rainy and gloomy days and now the winds are blowing off the petals. The display was as beautiful as ever, but the tree itself now has a fungus growing up it. I suppose this happens on weak specimens and can't help but wonder if this will do it in.

I couldn't get a good picture of it, but the trunk below this part looks bad: a thick section of outer bark is coming away from the inner part - I could just pull it off easily, by the look of it. But it still wants to bloom.

I've noticed this with a little dogwood we got two years ago: even with an insect boring problem, it still bloomed, although it looked terrible and didn't produce many leaves at the beginning. It seems they still bloom, no matter what.