Grab Bag

 

Mellow Swell at Ocean Beach

The ocean looked strange today. A combination of high tide and almost no wind left a fairly glassy surface, and each small swell looked like a kind of liquid jewel swirling toward the beach. 

Going Long

Short Take

Tuesday's Gone
(rear window sunrise, 3/5/24)

Miner's Dew

After Georgia O'Keeffe

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Male Rain

 

Yosemite High Country Cam
(2/29 & 3/3)

Yosemite Valley Cam
(2/29 & 3/3)

It doesn't look like Yosemite got as much snow as they expected. I've seen the High Country cam's view completely obliterated before, and Yosemite Valley appears to have gotten little more than a respectable dusting.

I first read about male rain and female rain back in the early '90s in books by Doug Boyd, especially Rolling Thunder and Mad Bear, and then later in reading Tony Hillerman's Navajo mystery novels featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. 

As I looked out the windows at the rain pouring down in the last day or two, I couldn't help thinking it looked like a male rain for a change. We've been getting lots of little showers this rainy season, but nothing like the deluge we just experienced. Of course, I don't consider it a real deluge until it blows out the manhole cover just up the street, which we've only seen two or three times in the 20+ years we've lived here. 

Rainy Day Timelapse

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Blowin' in the Wind

 

Howlin'

Not to rub it in or anything, but this morning I once again found myself feeling deeply grateful to be able to go for walks and bike rides instead of going to work. My walk took me over Parnassus Heights to Cole Valley, up and down the Haight, into the gardens and woodlands of Golden Gate Park, then back home through the Inner Sunset. Then it was back through the park for the bike ride, with a side trip to the old Cliff House to savor the awesome meeting of wind and wave. 

I was looking for a title for this post and came up with something probably too obvious. However, I looked up the lyrics and was struck by the fact that Dylan's song, written in 1962, could have been written for today. Some things never change. Ars longa, vita brevis.

Toil and Trouble

Sudsy Scoter

The perspective from the back deck of the old Cliff House always puts the high point of Seal Rocks even with the horizon. I think I'd like to be higher up, to put the horizon above the peak. Someday the old Cliff House will open up again and I'll be able to do that, maybe while enjoying a burger and a beer.

OBSF

Friday Crowd

Willets outnumbered people today.

It was good to see them back again.

Screenshot from this morning's sunrise timelapse.

Sunrise Timelapse, 3/1/24

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Tree Houseleek

Dressed in rain gear and pressing down on my ballcap to keep it from blowing away on this blustery Leap Day, I almost walked right past these blooming yellow plants without noticing something different about them.... Besides the September shot above, they're also in a picture from early December, and they weren't blooming then, either.

Apparently these natives of the Canary Islands are in the genus Aeonium (Greek for "ageless"), and these are probably A. arboreum or A. canariense. On Wikipedia they are given the oh-so-common name of tree houseleeks: the Anglo-Saxon word leac means plant, so they are basically called Tree Houseplants.  They're in the Crassulaceae, same as our stonecrops.

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Spring Bling

 

Shooting Stars

Spring is still almost three weeks away, and I guess we're going to get some heavy winter snows in the Sierra this weekend, but a few of my favorite early-season Mt. Tam wildflowers make it seem like spring is already here. I felt a little guilty to actually drive all the way up there just to snap a few photos with the DSLR, but it won't happen again (at least, not until next time). 

I also swapped out the two trail camera memory cards and gathered a few more male hazel flowers in the hope of dusting some of their pollen on the female flowers of our backyard hazel. After I clipped a few of the open catkins I shook the branches and sent a beautiful golden cloud of pollen drifting on a very light breeze. If only I could get a cloud like that to drift past my homegrown plant. 

When I hiked the short distance out to one of my favorite spots for finding calypso orchids, shooting stars, and Indian warrior (or warrior's plume, Pedicularis densiflora), I found a very changed landscape. There's been so much forest thinning going on (as a precaution against fire) that I found mostly fallen trees and slash piles along the forest edges where I'd expected to find wildflowers. Thankfully I still managed to find the few special species I was looking for. 

I'm curious to see what's going to happen with all the girdled trees. Will they die and become the well-used pantries of acorn woodpeckers? Homes to beetle larvae for pileated woodpeckers to dig out? A source of nesting holes for red-breasted nuthatches? I hope so.

Petals, Wavy & Flat

Like Indian paintbrush, Indian warrior is a hemiparasite, meaning it likes to parasitize the roots of other plants, but can live without doing so.

Calscape says it likes to parasitize members of the heath family, such as madrone.

Like a jubilant opera star, the fairy slipper (Calypso bulbosa) appears to sing its heart out.

Tiny sprouts of turkey pea (Sanicula tuberosa) were coming up among serpentine gravels.

Small Falls

The water flows have gone down quite a bit, and the forest floor has been drying out and getting crunchy again. Just in time for another deluge of rain. Bring it!

Pacific Trillium

Bobcat Composite

The bobcat must have been brushing up against the trail camera when it first set it off. A fox and a coyote also made an appearance this week, in addition to numerous turkeys and deer.

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Metson Lake Heron

 

Great Blue Heron at Attention

The great blue heron was in its usual spot within a scramble of branches when I biked past Metson Lake yesterday, so I took a little break to watch from a park bench on the edge of the lake. I first noticed the fallen tree on 2/3/23, and only recently began to see the occasional heron in there. It appeared to be resting and preening for the most part, although it did briefly show interest in something that swam by near its feet. I also saw a heron back (after a long absence in the wake of the Feb. 4 wind storm) in one of the nesting trees at Blue Heron Lake on the way home.

Preening the Wing

Stretching a Leg

I heard the clip-clopping of horses behind me as I was about to pack up and leave.

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Beached

 

Scooting Sanderlings

A sanderling steps up to the (dinner) plate.

Preparing to nab an unsuspecting mole crab.

Probing Reflections

A few surf scoters suddenly appeared close to shore and gave me a chance to fire off a few frames before they headed back out to deeper water.

It sorta looks like the scoter caught something, but it might just be a beakful of sand.

The sea foam was more colorful out of focus.

River of Clouds

This little rowboat looks like something you'd rent at Blue Heron Lake in Golden Gate Park. But hopefully you'd get one in better shape.

Good ole Mt. Tamalpais
(It took a while for the clouds to lift off its peak.)

Ocean Beach on a Sunny Sunday Afternoon (2/25/24)

Once a month my wife comes down to the beach to do an hour of clean-up of mostly little bits of plastic and short lengths of rope. It adds up to a surprisingly heavy load.

This old man and the sea
is probably younger than me.

Official Coast Guard Fly-by

Nature's Coast Guard Fly-by

Raven Shadow

The crude oil tanker Sapphira heads out to sea, with Mt. Tam in the distance. I only noticed later that a pair of boogie-boarders was having a kiss before paddling out.

Sanderlings on the Move

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Full Metal Moon

 

Full Moon Rising Behind Sutro Tower (2/23/24)

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