Slime Mold in the Yard

I was looking out the window of the laundry room into the back yard to see if the neighborhood cat was around when I spotted something unusual--a slime mold! It appears to be growing out of a stump that has been there since before we moved here in 2002, but which has never before produced any kind of fungal fruiting much less a slime mold. There is more slime mold growing in some nearby leaves, so I'm not actually sure it began with the stump or maybe some leaves lying on top of the stump.

My neighbor, a retired landscape gardener at Golden Gate Park who's lived in his place since the 1960s, said he believes the stump was once a yew tree.

Virtually all of the leaves on the ground are from the neighbor's lilly pilly tree (native to Australia).

Crop 1

Crop 2

I'm almost sorry that we're heading out on a camping trip tomorrow since I won't get to watch the progress of this splendid myxomycete.

Is this Fuligo septica, a white fruiting of the commonly yellow "dog vomit" slime mold, or maybe Enteridium lycoperdon, the false puffball?

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Lassen in July

Lake Helen (compare with June).

Bumpass Hell

Cinder Cone & Painted Dunes

Buckwheat in the Painted Dunes

Variegated Meadowhawk

Dot-tailed Whiteface

Rock Wren

Lewis's Monkey Flower

Aster

Lupine

Lemmon's Paintbrush

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Klamath Basin

About twenty years ago this month, a group of farmers in the Klamath Basin opened a sluice gate to protest water being used for the benefit of wildlife. They were soon shut down by federal marshals. The image above seems like a nice reminder that nature deserves water rights too. These are some photos from a July 2007 trip to see the Klamath Basin in the summer.

Eared Grebe (Podiceps nigricollis) with Chicks.

White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi)

Northern Harrier (Circus hudsonius)

Eight-spotted Skimmer (Libellula forensis)

Wood Nymph (Cercyonis pegala)

I don't recall what the actual air temperature was, but I remember being instantly drenched in sweat when I stepped out of my air-conditioned car to check out this marsh. I'd never experienced such a humid heat in California before.

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Past & Future

In contrast to the North Coast greenery of the previous post, here are a couple of high desert views looking toward the Mono Craters in July of 2006, scanned from Fuji Velvia.

I used to make a lot of quick trips to distant places until somewhere along the line I began to get sick of all that driving. The nail in the coffin was having to relinquish my four-day workweek to go back to five days. With all due respect to the Eternal Now, I get wistful looking back at all the interesting places I used to photograph so many years ago, and I look forward to having the time in another couple of years or so to re-acquaint myself with the natural beauty of California, and in a more leisurely way than I could in the past.

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North Coast Dash

We managed to snag a two-night stay at the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park campground--the only openings that were available all month.

It was a heck of a lot of driving for such a short stay, but I needed to refresh my memory of how excellent the redwoods up in Humboldt and Del Norte counties are.

We visited the Stout Grove up near Crescent City and the Lady Bird Johnson Grove to the south, both of which were truly awe-inspiring, but the trails right around the campground were also excellent.

I brought a trail cam in case Bigfoot would make an appearance, but we settled for a gray fox that traipsed through around midnight.

The Elk Prairie for which the campground is named had a dozen bulls in residence.

Fern Canyon was a hugely popular spot, with lots of cars parked at the end of the dusty road. I was last there in 2008 when I spent a night camping at Gold Bluffs Beach. I didn't recall there being any more than a couple of cars there at the time. Fortunately, the trail itself wasn't all that crowded, so we were able to maintain "social distancing," and most people wore face masks.

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