General Verdure and Great-Horned Owl

Out to the Woods via the Tree Loop trail. We've had light cool spring rains, an inch total over the past week. The Mexican plum Prunus mexicana are all blooming scattered through the Woods, like individual points of light. A few of the Bradford pear, Pyrus are also beginning to bloom. One, on the Pipeline trail had a dozen branches of flowers just newly, fully open. Another pear, seventy feet east, had no flowers but many green leaves just beginning to break bud.  Along the Tree Loop, the elms have all had their small red and green flowers open since February. Yesterday the first redbud flower buds were showing their rich deep pink color still largely closed inside the bud.
There is a south-facing slope on the west side of the west wash I enjoy watching in the spring, as the Galium bedstraw, Stellaria chickweed and other annuals first begin to turn the ground from brown to green.. and then as the low shrubs and young trees fill in a wall of green.
The air is redolent with patches of wild green onions north of the main east west trail.
Along the north fence line, the crews have cut and shredded a swath of destruction ten feet or more south from the fence. They've completed that 'mowing' from the NW corner to the top of the slope down to the western wash. Walking along the newly opened space, the air is filled with the smell of cut cedar wood. I am tempted to place my beetle traps out along the fence to see what is flying.
Sad note from five days ago.. coming to the East Pond I saw an unidentifiable brown shape floating by the the big cottonwood. With two sticks I fished out a beautiful great-horned owl. It must have been recently dead as the wings were not stiff. It was a gorgeous animal with magnificent wings, feathers, large round yellow eyes, powerful beak, strong stiff legs and powerful talons. A mystery, why it came to be floating there. I emailed Gary and rang Tamaki and took it to the Museum.