Then the seeds, that for six months have lain on the ground dry and fresh as if they had been gathered into barns, at once unfold their treasured life.
The general brown and purple of the ground, and the dead vegetation of the preceding year, give place to the green of mosses and liverworts and myriads of young leaves.

Then one species after another comes into flower, gradually overspreading the green with yellow and purple, which lasts until May.
The "rainy season" is by no means a gloomy, soggy period of constant cloudiness and rain.

Perhaps nowhere else in North America, perhaps in the world, are the months of December, January, February, and March so full of bland, plant-building sunshine.

Referring to my notes of the winter and spring of 1868-69, every day of which I spent out of doors, on that section of the plain lying between the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, I find that the first rain of the season fell on December 18th.
January had only six rainy days--that is, days on which rain fell; February three, March five, April three, and May three, completing the so-called rainy season, which was about an average one.

The ordinary rain-storm of this region is seldom very cold or violent.