My legs were kind of wilty today after yesterday’s ride so I kept my ride to the commute to campus for class and then back home. I pedaled along, noticing the lushness that all this heat and humidity give us. Back at the beginning of spring we got the brilliant azaleas and that insidious cat’s claw and the cloying jasmine. I always feel a little sad as the heat comes on because I know it’s the end of that first wild color, but lately as I ride around I’ve been noticing the outrageous fuschias and purples and the sparkling bright whites of these flowering trees. Are they lilacs? I snapped a photo of this bright pink one on the side of this house at Camp and Toledano. Today what I saw when I looked at this scene was the color–the battered white and blue of the truck, the green of the tufts of grass and the airy tree next to the showy pink one in the center, all framed against the blue and white house raised on bricks, hidden behind the sliver fence. That sidewalk is going to be awash in pink petals soon, and then we will move on to the batch of colors. We earn it with this weather, I tell you.