Down Home

 

Potted Mushroom

At the bottom of this post back in early January I mentioned the Poison Pie mushrooms [UPDATE: spore print below] that were growing in my potted coast live oaks. Today I saw that they were back, just a few days before the rainy season officially comes to a close at the end of this month (according to the New York Times). 

My plans for a thousand-mile round-trip drive down to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park seem to have evaporated like desert dew, hampered by commitments at home and windy conditions in Borrego Springs. 

It's kind of far to go down there for a day or two, and it's been tricky trying to find a longer opening, in part due to our ailing Coco. A semi-feral outdoor cat who adopted us about eight years ago, she's been having some age-related medical issues, and even seems to have caught a cold (I'd never heard a cat sneeze so much!). Now she hardly ever goes any farther than our sunny stair stoop, and she needs increased care and companionship. So, it's not the best time for me to take off for several days on photo safari.

I was going to drive up to Mt. Tam to check on the trail cams today, but it looks like we're going to be in for some sunny weather soon, so I think I'll wait a few days and ride my ebike up there when the roads have dried out early next week. 

In the meantime I'm staying close to home, enjoying the cloudscapes, the townsends warblers singing in the trees, the chickadees gathering Coco's cat hair for nesting material, and the blooming of orange Clivia flowers and white calla lilies in the yard. Just the other day I heard a hermit thrush singing in the neighbor's oak tree for the first time ever. And the leaves on our hazel tree have just started to unfold (I noticed them coming out on Mt. Tam in early March). 

Clivia flower in calla lily leaf.

Finally, some vertical build-up action for the timelapse....

Rear Window Timelapse, 3/28/24

Getting the FZ-80 about as close as it can get.

Calla lilies are kind of irresistible.

The side of my neighbor's house was in the background so I made a little pop-art....

Unfurling hazel leaves (from a branch pressed against the side of my neighbor's house), 3/25/2024.

I rarely see the bison lying down, but lately they're doing it all the time. There was just this one out there today while the rest of the herd was lined up for lunch close to their feeding pen. 

This tree in Golden Gate Park looks great all the time, but sometimes the light makes it magical (more so than I was able to capture in this shot, unfortunately). I usually pass this tree riding my bike downhill at about 25 mph, and I rarely stop to admire it. Sometimes it seems like things look more interesting in passing than they do standing still.

[UPDATE] This morning's spore print of the poison pie (Hebeloma crustuliniforme).

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Moonshot

 

Full moon rising behind Twin Peaks at 8:34 p.m. on 3/25/2024

I was in the living room reading The Right Stuff, Tom Wolf's book about the first American astronauts, when my wife called me to the back window. "And you'd better hurry!" 

Moonrise was at 8:07 p.m., so it took about 27 minutes to rise to the above position. I'm pretty confident about the time the photo was taken because I just recently re-set the clocks on my cameras to DST.

Full moon over Twin Peaks, with car in the foreground. Some clouds near the top of the moon reduced the exposure there just enough to get some detail on its surface.

Full moon setting this morning over the Eastern Sierra from Bishop.

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High Country Beauty

 

Beautiful morning in the high country, about 9 a.m., 3/23/2024.

Passing storm evening view at about 6 p.m., 3/24/2024.

And still more snow this morning, 3/30/2024 (it even snowed on the valley floor).

Close to 5:30 p.m., 3/30/2024

Morning of 4/6/2024

Morning of 4/14/2024: the last snow of the season?

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Waiting for Rain

 

Ocean Beach Esplanade

It's after 3 p.m., and I'm still waiting for our "80 percent chance of rain after 2 p.m." I do like the rain at times, especially if I've already enjoyed a long walk and a bike ride on the beautiful morning that precedes it. 

I probably should have set the Sutro Tower timelapse (below) to run while I was on my bike, but I thought I had more time before the clouds would blot out the blue sky. Between the time I snapped a photo of Golden Gate Park's newly rehabilitated Middle Lake slowing filling up with water from the adjacent casting pools, and the short time later that I snapped the beach view toward Mt. Tam above, the sky had mostly filled up with clouds.

Nevertheless, I captured a timelapse once I got home, in part to add an audio track using my new Fender Mustang Micro amp -- a guitar amplifier that is literally 1.5 inches by 3 inches in size (the sound only plays in your headphones). I also had to download free recording software called Audacity. 

It's a new world. I have not been keeping up with digital music devices over the years and am looking forward to exploring the possibilities.

Someone parked their zoo on 10th Avenue today.

Two years of construction is finally coming to an end at Middle Lake, and water is slowly filling it up. It's not open yet, and I only got this phone snap because a gate had been briefly left open and unattended. For scale, those are two Canada geese inside the red circle.

Rear Window Timelapse

(3/22/2024)

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Spring Hike

 

View from Mt. Tam's north side near Barth's Retreat, with Mt. Saint Helena in the distance.

My wife was able to get the day off for a true spring break, so we hiked a loop from Rock Spring: Cataract Trail to Mickey O'Brien Trail to Barth's Retreat to Portrero Meadows to Rifle Camp, then back along the Lagunitas-Rock Spring Road to the Benstein Trail and the Simmons Trail to close the loop back at the Cataract Trail.

The hike started out chilly, around 45 degrees just after 9 a.m., but warmed up by the time we reached Barth's Retreat, where I spotted a chickadee entering a nest cavity in a dead Douglas fir. I trained my camera on the hole, but I either picked the wrong one, or the sneaky devil came out a different hole. It appeared to have been carrying away a poop sack as it exited, but I missed the shot. 

The air was so fresh with spring that it was actually perfumed in places where the sun's warm rays volatilized aromatic molecules from the forest that graced our nasal passages with their tantalizing bouquets. We passed a raucous group of acorn woodpeckers that were chasing each other through the high branches and sometimes grappling, then twirling together as they fell, only to break it off well before they hit the ground. I also saw a pair of hummingbirds having a tussle very near the ground, but they flew away as I approached with my camera. Hopefully I interrupted fighting rather than mating.

We saw lots of calypso orchids in the woods, and shooting stars in the wet meadows, and a single star lily just beginning to bloom at Potrero Meadow. We also saw our first western fence lizards of the season.

I resisted pulling out my camera until we enountered this delicious backlight on some sedges and horsetails in Cataract Creek.

I often pass up the first few potential subjects, but once I do finally break out the camera I start shooting just about everything that catches my fancy, like this white slime mold (possibly Brefeldia maxima).

Tortoiseshell warming its tattered wings on a sunny trunk.

Zoomed-in view over green hills and remnants of fog, toward Mt. Saint Helena.

This is a cross-section of a redwood that had fallen across the trail at Potrero Meadow. I count about 30 rings.

The bee flies were buzzin' at Barth's Retreat. I was surprised to be able to catch one with the FZ80.

Star Lily in the Sun

Dried Sulfur Tufts

This was the most stout and vividly colored calypso orchid we saw all day.

It looks like this banana slug is interested in poop, but I think it's actually some  crapped-out poor-man's licorice.

And this was the most unusual inflorescence of calypsos that we saw.

And how about the most laid-back acorn woodpecker ever. I couldn't believe it let me get so close, and it never did fly away.

A blue-belly takes in the sun...

...and shows off with some burly push-ups.

The following are just some recent shots from local walks.

Purple pistil, golden anthers, and cloud-white petals at Strybing Arboretum.

Spring color at Strybing Arboretum.

Spring growth always creates a tunnel of plants on this set of stairs, but the bonus was the Echium coming into bloom and beginning to hum with visiting bees.

At the top of the stairs I spotted this juvenile red-tailed hawk. I could tell it was a juvenile in part because it didn't fly away, as the adults usually do. Also, its breast feathers were not as white as an adult's.

In addition to red-tails, there was a red house over yonder.

"It's spring!" exclaimed the man on horseback.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. ThisTricholoma equestre was actually photographed many years ago, in January, near Barth's Retreat.

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Carrizo Plain in March Past

 

The Yellow Carpet (3/10/2010)

Back in the days before social media took off, you could have Carrizo Plain pretty much to yourself, especially in March before the peak bloom. Back then I usually couldn't get time off from work at the optimum times, so I'd go when I could. Last year was the first time I was able to time my trip, passing through once with my wife on our way to San Diego, then returning on my own later in the month. I'm still undecided as to whether I'll go down this year, but in the meantime I thought I'd share some March scenes from the olden days....

This was the view toward the Caliente Range from Soda Lake Road...

...and this was the view in the other direction, toward the Temblor Range (both 3/3/2005).

Not that I've been out there a lot, but I used to reliably see pronghorn before the big solar farms were built. I thought for sure I'd see some last year with so much forage available, but nope. (Photo from 3/3/05).

This is from 3/10/2010, and I don't believe the sign is still there. 

Meadowlarks: the sound of Carrizo Plain in March (3/3/05).

The fiddleneck back when I shot this (3/3/05) was heavy around Soda Lake, but not elsewhere on the plain. Last year I was surprised to see how far and wide it had spread.

Fiddleneck sunrise (3/11/2004).

Back then (3/3/05) it felt like I had arrived at peak bloom. I'd never seen such a large-scale profusion of wildflowers before.

I like to see what I still own after so many years. The Jeep is long gone, but that cooler was already about 11 years old back then (3/3/05), and I still have it. I also still have the Marmot jacket, but the camp chair broke just last year while camping at Sonora Pass.

Is "Cheerful as a Daisy" a thing (3/10/2010)?

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