Flower drive
Wednesday, 6 February 2019
In flower terms, we drove from variegated camellia…
…to flowering quince. We did not use flower power to get us from there to here, only the usual petroleum product.
Musings
Short cuts
Monday, 4 February 2019
You’ve heard of “Where’s Waldo.” This is Waldo. This is Waldo’s downtown tavern. This is where you get a brewski and a bologna sandwich.
This is winter-fallow Ohio. Note snow persists only in the shade; however, more serious winter is coming.
Teasel silhouette.
Massive mountain road cut. Ice scabs on Mother Earth.
Mezze trio. Left to right: Lebanese hummus, Syrian muhamarra, and smoked eggplant zaalouk. My first time eating the latter. Yum, however my favorite of these three is the muhamarra.
Fleurs jaunes
Sunday, 27 January 2019
I did not plan the color commonality. Forsythia.
Daffodils. Someone else’s garden.
And our garden. [Ignore the cold(ish) snap!]
New and old
Wednesday, 23 January 2019
Brand new stump. See yesterday’s entry…. Seems like ginkgo wood might make pretty furniture….
Old stump. Oak, I’m guessing.
New flowers. Crocuses (or is it croci?). Spring comes early when we have Dec/Jan heat waves in the Sunny South. Up in the 60s today, but I’m guessing tonight’s rain will lower the temps for tomorrow.
Local news
Tuesday, 22 January 2019
In local news, a long-time neighborhood denizen is now gone. Mixed feelings as I hate to see mature trees removed, but this one was a productive female, and the fleshy layer surrounding the seeds start out odiferous, and when on the ground get even more…highly stinky-scented. Bye Stinkgo Ginkgo! [Shame on the nursery that marketed this one; it should have sold only male ginkgos for urban planting….]
In sports news, ATL has been basking in being the 2018 Major League Soccer champions. The next big event is that Soooperdooperbowl, which is already enmeshed in scandal because of a ref call in the Rams/Saints game….
In personal “news,” my sport (in quotes?) is walking, and today I worked on refining my Vitamin D-heightened routing…I’m liking more east-west routes approximately during mid-day, to have sunshine on a cheek most of the time (other skin is bundled up! it’s winter!). This is supposed to give me more Vitamin D than supplements…and Vitamin D is a very good thing! (See note on last Thursday’s entry here.)
White flowers
Saturday, 19 January 2019
When I set out, it was sprinkling, and all meteorological sources indicated the rain would increase. I kept my fingers crossed and my hood up.
I saw several dog-walkers, and one mom-child set in the playground, seemingly oblivious to the precipitation.
Soon after I returned, the rain increased, and I heard that overnight the temps will plummet and the mountains may even get snow. Whew!
Looking through my day’s photos, I was surprised that all flower photos were of white blooms…not intentional!
Moss biology
Friday, 18 January 2019
Here’s your mossy vocabulary moment…the tall parts are sporophytes, and the low green parts are gametophytes. These represent alternating phases of the life cycle of this moss. In the cycle, the gametophytes come first, then the sporophytes attach to them.
Now you know plenty about moss; I know there’s more, but this is the level I have attained (momentarily).
Desert does not smell like rain
Sunday, 13 January 2019
For dozens of miles crossing the desert this morning, the air smelled to me vaguely like burning plastic, an odor backnote I found rather unpleasant. Miles.
The plants, however: unfazed. Unknown grey-green leaved low shrub with yellow fliers…
…and a towering yucca (I think).
Today’s title references one of my favorite books, Gary Paul Nabhan’s The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in Papago Indian Country (1987). This desert perhaps should have smelled like rain today, as rain came through this area in the wee hours overnight. In fact, we think we’ve had rain at some point every day beginning on the 26th of December, for a run of 19 days so far. Tomorrow we may well not see rain, however.
Divided road
Tuesday, 8 January 2019
Isn’t that the cutest low-profile lighthouse? Cali-cute!
And there’s the Mar Pacifico—today not terribly pacifico. You can’t see the wind and blowing rain. Elegant, enduring seastacks….
Love the marching swells cut below by the long shallow sea-edge profile.
NoCal tourism touts the elk herds. Here’s one. Grazing and resting. Classic elk-life, when carnivores are not threatening.
Coastal NoCal also hosts trees—not only the giant redwoods pictured here.
During the rainy season, the trees and clouds may merge. This shot is from a high-elevation meadow called in these parts a prairie. [Note: this use of “prairie” is not a Boontling term.]
We took our walk in a section of the 🎶redwood forest🎶 we had not walked in before. I remember almost always seeing lone trees, or perhaps pairs. Here’s a circle of relative newbie trees. I did not find out if they are clones of the dead stump in the center, or if the rotting stump provided a hospitable microenvironment for whatever seeds were at its base to germinate.
For contrast: lichen growth on twists of redwood bark at a tree base.
Post title refers to a Cali term we kept encountering on road signs…which seemed to have been a pet term by some transportation engineers, rather than a road situation of great distinction for drivers. The first we encountered had a small curb between the two lanes that otherwise seemed like a regular two-lane road; another had merely a marked off paved area about a foot wide between the two directions—no elevation change whatsoever—and two lanes each way. Diversity in them thar divided roads….
Caption exercise
Thursday, 3 January 2019
Lichen threatens survival of shrub.
Road to nowhere.
Tree in glass box*.
* in an Apple store—open to the sky, so not a closed box.