True Nature Stories: Random Frames

Roadside Garden (15th Avenue)

I was recently telling one of my neighbors how much I've loved watching his Coast Live Oak fill out this year. He planted it more than 50 years ago, and it's always been tall and gangly, stout and healthy -- but relatively sparsely leaved: it's always been easy to see right through its crown.

After the drenching rains of this past winter though, the view through the crown has been closing up with new foliage, and it looks better than I've ever seen it in the 20 years we've lived here. Yesterday, my wife and I were walking in the neighborhood when we discovered another beneficiary of the winter rains -- a roadside garden that has never looked so good as it does right now. I took a phone snap of it under sunny skies, then decided to go back today with the D800 and foggy skies.

On my walk this morning I saw another surprising miniature street garden next to a fire hydrant adorned with rust and graffiti. I can't even remember if I used to notice fire hydrants before an artist friend, Anna Conti, did a series of oil paintings of hydrants around the city. She had a show of them at the Pacific Catch at Lincoln and Irving (back when it had art shows), and a few San Francisco firefighters came to the opening. (Come to think of it, Anna also made several paintings of cargo vessels in San Francisco Bay, a subject I've recently become interested in.)

After my walk I was about to head out on my bike when I checked out back to see if the cat was around and in need of something to eat. She was curled up in some leaves in a neighbor's unkempt yard/patio area, sleeping the morning away. Although we've been caring for her quite a bit since the pandemic had us working from home, I still like to think of her as a neighborhood cat, or even a semi-feral or stray cat, and I love that she seems so natural in the "wilds" of our urban yards.

When we were recently in San Diego we visited Cabrillo National Monument, and I tried to buy a lifetime senior national parks pass, which costs $80. Before he charged my card, the ranger mentioned that the pass was free to veterans, thanks to some new bill that Congress passed back in November, and he took my word for it when I said I was a veteran, so we got in for free. In the future, though, I figured I'd need proper ID.

Since I was in the Navy a million years ago and no longer have a military ID, I had to order a copy of my separation papers (Form DD 214) issued in 1983. I did it online, and it was easy.

When it finally arrived I had to take it downtown to the County Veterans Service Office, which I'd never even heard of before. I took a number and a seat in the waiting room, feeling quite a bit like I was back in the Navy, and was soon called by a clerk who verified the DD 214's authenticity. She in turn issued me another form, officially embossed, that I had to take to the DMV to get a "Veteran" designation on my driver's license.

Since my license was set to expire in a few months anyway, I made an appointment at the DMV to renew it. I arrived early for my appointment, but still had to wait in line, take another number, and sit in a waiting area. After a couple of hours to get through the eye exam, the updated mug shot, and the driver knowledge test (no online renewal for me, alas), I was finally outta there.

A couple of weeks later, the postman dropped my new license with its "Veteran" designation through the mail slot, and just this morning I was biking over at Land's End to photograph a container ship when I realized I could probably get the free national parks pass right there. They even had one in stock.

Total elapsed time (since San Diego) to save $80: six weeks. Not too bad for government work.