Notes about your surroundings.

Trail Trip--Earth Day, April 22, is getting all the publicity, but that weekend will also see the observance of State Trails Day on April 21. To mark the day, the Orange County Trails Committee of the Sierra Club will lead a two-day trail maintenance backpack into the San Mateo Canyon Wilderness.

Volunteers will help repair a historic trail in the heart of the wilderness, which covers parts of Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties. There will be about five miles of backpacking to get to the work site, with camping near San Mateo Creek.

The committee has been restoring, maintaining and building trails in the Santa Ana Mountains for 17 years. Trips are organized monthly, September through May.

The U.S. Forest Service supplies tools, but volunteers are asked to bring gloves. For information on the trip, which leaves at 7 a.m. from a car-pool point in Santa Ana Canyon, call Ken Croker, (714) 546-7016.

April Showers--The rains this week did little to ease the drought, but they did give a boost to what had been shaping up to be a lackluster wildflower season.

“It helped things tremendously,” said John Bovee, park ranger at Santiago Oaks Regional Park in Orange. “It looks like it’s turning into a pretty neat season.”

Two of the park’s trails--Windes and Pacifica--provide particularly good viewing, according to Bovee. Among the flowers in abundance are baby blue eyes, Indian paintbrush and ground pink. A number of other species appear ready to bloom, Bovee said.

Caspers Wilderness Park on Ortega Highway is another prime spot for finding spring color.

Weed Pull--In another Earth Day-related activity, volunteers are needed Saturday to help clear non-native pampas grass from the Upper Newport Bay area. The event will take place along Back Bay Drive in the ecological reserve from 9 a.m. to noon. Participants should wear old clothes, boots and heavy gloves, and should bring a shovel. Information: (714) 547-6282.