Another week has past and another week into spring we have progressed! This week featured some warm days and we had lots of rain. Between last week and this week here in the Fairmount Park neighborhood of Des Moines we have seen 2.67″ of rain, and temperatures have been in the 60s and 70s.

 

This week Flowering pear grace the streets area cities and farmlands with beautiful clouds of white flowers and is making for a beautiful sight. A nice area to walk right now is Park street in Downtown Des Moines which is lined with Flowering Pear. Neighborhoods and parks all over the city are beautiful at time because everything mentioned in this post is blooming along side Magnolias from last week! The above photo is along Easton Boulevard

I chose a Flowering Pear as my backyard tree for my house because of its large size but graceful blooms and simply because I knew it was something I could not grow in Northern Wisconsin and I wanted to embrace the southerly latitude. Warning though, Flowering pears are beautiful to look at but the flowers do not smell nice! However if you ask me personally I don’t think its as bad as some may suggest. Newer Cleveland Select varieties are good choices for lawns. However old Bradford varieties are weak branched and should be avoided.

This week Tulips are in full bloom! Gardens that are planted with them are colorful and bright at this time. Tulips being in bloom now is great news for the Tulip festival in Pella, which I will be attending Thursday. I will be posting more photos of tulips at that time. The tulips above I had in the fridge over the winter and planted a couple of weeks after I moved.

Our urban tree canopy has really pushed into green this week with the above mentioned rain and warmth. All early and mid season trees are now flowering or leafing out. Early trees like Crabapples and willows are completely leafed out. Most trees are leafed out to the point where shading is starting to occur. A look across the canopy as a whole you can see lots of green starting to become dense. Only very late trees such as Oaks, hickories, and Walnuts have yet to leaf out.

To come into bloom very shortly will be Crab apples and Lilacs both of which are actually just starting to flower now. My Magnolia is also starting to flower, I will have photos when full bloom occurs. The next few days cool rainy weather is expected, which will likely slow down our growth a bit.

Today strong storms hit the local area as a couple fronts sat right over the area. Storms developed by 1pm this afternoon and produced mainly hail of non severe thresholds. Here in Fairmount Park we actually had 2-3 storms push over and the 2nd one produced the hail above. Heavy downpours were also seen. There was no severe weather reports anywhere in the area.