I swear, it was like a rainforest in Central Park yesterday.

Everything is blooming.

When the sun cut through the clouds the ground sizzled.

The Sheep Meadow was covered in hundreds of robins. All hopping around, chirping and snacking.

This guy came out looking for a snack, too. He was completely oblivious to my presence.

Afterwards I stopped by here to practice my new routine to “I’m Coming Out,” as usual. Later I was surprised to learn the story behind the Diana Ross Playground had to do with another rainy day in Central Park.

More supreme shots.

Isn’t it amazing? I snapped these shots of water falling at several locations in Brooklyn today. Oh, and also, Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls were switched on.

As soon as I started riding over there it started pouring. As the rain pelted my face, I thought wow, this must be exactly what it feels like under the Brooklyn Bridge!

A new park opened, too, to get people even more pumped for water-watching. Perhaps the rain was all part of the city’s promotional plan?

From what I could gather here, they were using hay bales as planters. It looked like they cut holes out of the hay and dropped soil in with the plants. But why? It’s a great idea but I’m guessing there’s more thought behind it than that. Do tell!

One of my favorite magazines both to write for and about, GOOD, had a party last weekend here in NY. The theme was greenmarket gourmet! All the vendors were so cute and of course gave us many, many samples.

It was right on the East River and although it was oppressively moist, a nice breeze kicked up as the sun went down. To get there, I rode a bike over the Williamsburg Bridge for the first time.

Never before have I been so thrilled with the spread at a party. Sugar snap peas! Strawberries! Sausage! Heirlooms you could just pick up and eat like an apple! Honey lavender gin cocktails!

Come to think of it, I have been drinking a lot of gin this summer. Normally I would not touch the stuff. But there have been so many interesting drinks presented to me that include gin. I believe gin is in!

For the last 15 days an amazing technicolor stream of fluids has poured forth from every orifice on my head. After living here for six springs with nary a sneeze, suddenly Los Angeles, a place I believed I was immune to, has rendered me allergic.

After decorating my desk with festive Kleenex drifts for a week, I ventured out of the house for a walk up Outpost. Looking towards Runyon Canyon Park I suddenly realized the hills were not only green, but yellow and purple and blue (they’re usually brown, brown, brown) and remembered that thanks to the expert timing of a monsoon in January, this is a banner year for wildflowers. So I ran home, got my camera, and over the course of three expeditions to Runyon, documented exactly what was incapacitating me.

Now, nearing the end of my congestion, I present to you:  Project Runyon.

Some findings:

· These are only the plants that are currently blooming and this changes every day. I’ll try to add to them over the next few weeks, noting which are just starting to bloom into May.

· Using my Introduction to the Plant Life of Southern California, I think I’ve identified about 75% of them, so please let me know if you know something I don’t, or if I have something wrong, or send this to someone who might know such things.

· If I knew a flower was not native or invasive, I noted it beneath the photo. Plus since people lived/live in Runyon, there are plenty of flowers that have been planted around residences. I tried to note that, too.

· Also important: I am not a photographer, these are only reference photos. But I did use that little tulip icon on my camera.

· The most prevalent flower in Runyon—that fluorescent yellow bloom so bright you can see it from planes—is not native! Black mustard creeps over our hillsides, choking out our SoCal natives. Here’s a nice piece about the noxious plants and invasive weeds in the area, and what you can do about it.

·  I have tried for years to learn the names of the native plants in Los Angeles by reading books but this is the first time I actually remembered them! The process of identifying them in the park, sorting through the photos, and looking them up has truly burned them into my brain.

· I found plenty of what I’m allergic to—oak and grass—but it would be interesting to know why all of a sudden I’m reliving my childhood of hayfever. However, if you’re suffering this time of year, rest assured:  That which doesn’t kill you sure looks pretty.

I was thrilled to see this story by Janet Cromley in today’s LA Times, “StairMaster with a view: Hiking the stairways of Echo Park, Silver Lake.” Not just because finding and hiking the stairways in my neck of Hollywood has become my own personal obsession, but because the subject of the story, Dan Koeppel, took me on an abbreviated version of his 16.2 mile hike a few years ago.

Dan’s a freelance writer with outdoor inclinations (and, if I remember correctly, the calf muscles to match). But his step obsession began while writing the memoir To See Every Bird on Earth. The book is about his father, who basically left their family to become one of the pre-eminent birders in the world (he’s seen over 7,000 species). Dan needed something to help him escape his own head, so he started hiking and cataloging a route that started outside his front door. When Dan and I took our walk, he was working on Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (which came out last year) and peppered our hike with at least 50 fascinating banana anecdotes. I got the feeling Dan might need more than a simple stairway hike to download after he finished that book.

I still have a paper version of the map that Dan gave me, an eight-page document rainbow-coded to elevation gain (red=thigh burn), along with a spreadsheet that gives directions and tips (”Tricky, make sure you’re on Lucile!”). Now Dan’s put the map online so fellow stairmasters can join in the hike. When we parted ways almost three years ago I swore to create a route linking my stairs with his. The stairs are there—I’ve got a solid route from my neighborhood all the way west through Beachwood Canyon, and I’ve hiked some in Los Feliz Estates, throughout Franklin Hills, right down into to Silver Lake and Echo Park, and beyond into Eagle Rock—but I failed to keep up my end of the bargain. Maybe I need to write a book.