I Love This Time of Year

I looked outside to find this on the lawn:

It looks like popcorn!  It's the flowers from the Catalpa (aka Catawba in the south) tree and I think it's in the fullest bloom I've ever seen!  Our vehicles were covered with them!  They smell pretty too.   I don't remember smelling them before.

There is something about flowers all over the ground that makes me especially happy.  In the spring, we have a lot of the Chinese Cherry trees that leave their carnation-like blooms all over the ground and I know a lot of people who go out and immediately mow them up to clean up, but I like to leave them for a while.

This is the tree.

Catalpas grow really fast.  After these flowers fall, really long, string bean like pods grow.  Someone I know insists that they are in the bean family but I can't find any connection.  This particular tree has been looking really bad the past few years and I thought it was dying.  I don't remember many flowers for the past couple of springs and there is some serious dead wood in it.  There is a point that you can completely see through in the trunk and I thought it was split and dying.



I'd say it looks pretty healthy from this view!