Today's walk report: As Old As You're Young

 A nice walk today. I should've gotten out earlier but then again I should've slept later. There was a lot of meandering around during the walk and while I usually have a pretty precise measurement on distance traveled, today I don't. It would take too long to map it back out (Google Earth) but based on last weekend's 2.37 mile walk, I'd estimate it was 2.5 miles. I would've gone farther had it not warmed up on me so quickly. 

Here are some pictures taken along the way, some familiar subjects and some not so familiar. 

Saturday, April 18th

These are not the shrooms you're looking for.

 Oenothera speciosa,  pink ladies or pink evening primrose. They multiply quickly.

 This rose’s petals look like they were painted by hand.

 The last of the Pelargonium sidoides, AKA, African geranium flowers.

 Not the same Iris germanica 'Immortality' from last week but rather the one that opened next to it.

 Google says this is an Asparagus Fern, specifically identified as Asparagus retrofractus or Asparagus macowanii.  

 Bat-faced cuphea, Cuphea llavea.

 Heliotropium arborescens.

 Monarch on narrowleaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis). I spoke with one of the curators for the arboretum and the campus botanical garden and commended him on the abundance of native milkweed. I also mentioned my struggles in attempting to germinate and grow Asclepias fascicularis. The seeds need to be cold stratified to germinate and I have gotten past that part but they always (maybe three efforts at this) die on me shortly after getting the seedlings into soil. He said he would set aside a one gallon container for me to pick up tomorrow. Nice!

 Cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae).

 Most of my time sitting was spent watching these cliff swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota). While I've watched them in the sky fly catching dozens of times they are almost impossible to track for photos. Try it sometime, try following a bird trying to eat a fly in flight. I honestly didn't know what they looked like until today. I've seen the nests dozens of times too but this was the first time I was sitting down while they were actively working on nesting close by. Yes, that's mud and yes by human terms, they can make a mess of things. There is a long row of nests under this one overhang.

The bleeding wall. It's like a Poe short story.

 
Thanks again to Miss Junimoon for all of her help.

 
Look at the mirror over there, what do you see? Tell yourself a lie 
Are you as old as you seem? Feel something that you have to 
Being open, an innocent, wise only when age can mellow the haste 
New hopes, ambitions undone—you're only as old as you're young

 

Yesterday's walk report: More monarchs and stuff

 I got through most of this process yesterday, at least the photo editing portion was taken care of but with this other delayed post from Friday's backyard butterfly activity, two posts in day was too much. I also have other stuff to do. Right now, Juni is curled up in my lap purring away and that might cut the banter... good for you and me.

Here are some photos taken on yesterday's 2.37 mile walk.

Sunday, April 12th

Hong Kong Orchid Tree (Bauhinia × blakeana). I last took close-up images of flowers on this tree on March 28th. I was taken aback yesterday by how loaded it was with flowers since then. 

 Also in that March 28th post I mis-ID'd this flower as, Turk's Cap (Malvaviscus arboreus). I did that because Google told me so. I thought too it looked familiar but none of the buds were fully open. It's actually Pavonia-missionum AKA, red mallow. 

 Onto the first monarchs and monarchs because they have been unusually plentiful--not so overall in the grand scheme of things but in my recent walks, yes. The shrub is Cotoneaster pannosus, known by the common name silverleaf cotoneaster.

I have taken pictures of this canna lily many times but this might be the prettiest I have ever seen it.

 

 Same deal with this Iris germanica 'Immortality'. It typically has looked rather beat up when I've seen it flowering.

 

If you notice water drops, that's because we got .25" of rain yesterday. That was greatly appreciated because I needed to water at home and wasn't feeling especially inclined to walk around with a garden hose. Left rear, an absolutely massive Salvia canariensis (Canary Island Sage).

In this post I mentioned the 120 yard line of pomegranate trees loaded with flowers. Here are some of the larger ones. That small ramp leads to the campus weather station. I rely heavily on data from that weather station.

Another update. This is the palo verde tree that had lost two large branches last week. It appears to me that was a rather sloppy cut by the clean-up crew. I forgot to get a picture of the "cleanup" cut on the other side break. 

 

Back to the monarchs. Those last images were taken in the arboretum. I'm now in the botanical garden a little over a 1/4 mile away. 

 

Monarch butterfly and a no-ID Callistemon. 

 

Monarchs on Salvia rosmarinus. These are two different butterflies. there were three. I believe one of them is the same as the one on the bottlebrush.

 

 Classroom building's rock roof with treetops (an oak and palo verde trees) in the background. The sky was beautiful post the early AM rains.

 

One more monarch shot in a small eucalyptus tree. A rather diminutive male monarch. 

 After that I continued walking just for the sake of walking. On the way back to my car I detoured into the garden one more time for a few minutes of bench sitting. Not a great shot but this Pistacia chinensis tree has been consistently a perch for many male Calypte anna humminbirds I have followed over the years. Expect to see this bird again (we may have seen him before, I still need some familiarity). 

 I almost always add a song off of YouTube at the end of each post. Sometimes the song is post-relative and other times it's more relevant to what I was listening to or to my general mood. Sometimes it's just a song. This time I wanted to post something different. Many viewers have probably already seen photos from the recent Artemis II space mission and certainly have been moved by them. I was actually brought to tears yesterday watching this and seeing again the first Earth rising image. Earthrise, taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. That image at least started the emotional roller-coaster for me. All of the images are stunning in their inherent beauty, but also driving my feelings was how this beautiful planet is being destroyed by a handful of greedy, gluttonous, narcissistic humans, with no moral compass. I watched much of this without sound.
 

PS, Juni slept (mostly) in my lap for the duration.

Yesterday's butterfly, fix it in post

 In the early 2000s I was a moderator for an online forum called 2-pop. 2-pop.com was a pioneering web forum focused on desktop video editing, specifically supporting early adopters of Final Cut Pro and small-budget filmmakers. Since I was selling hardware and software into that market it seemed like a good place to be. A 2-pop refers to a 1 kHz tone that is one frame long and placed 2 seconds before the start of a program. It is a simple and effective method of ensuring synchronization between sound and picture in a video or film. 

Fix it in post was often offered as a joke for fixing the impossible. It refers to the ironic, often painful, and humorous reality that many on-set problems deemed fixable later are, in fact, impossible or extremely expensive to fix. It is a common, sardonic mantra in the film industry that serves as a polite way to abandon a failing shot and offload the impossible work onto the editor. 

When I first saw this Papilio rutulus, the western tiger swallowtail yesterday, I was sitting where I'm sitting right now, at my computer, in my office. I haven't seen a western tiger swallowtail in quite awhile. I usually see more eastern giant swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes) butterflies. Anyway, it appeared to be a perfect specimen when I first started to take photos and then I saw its battle scars. While the line, fix it post popped into my head, the butterfly was still beautiful and I wasn't planning to do so.*

 * But then I wondered... How much of a challenge would it be...

 Here's the same shot before I fudged with it. I think the butterfly shows character.

 
For the most part, I like to present photos I've taken the way I see them. Which should not be confused with the way the camera sees subjects. Digital cameras see differently than human eyes by prioritizing raw light data over interpreted perception, often resulting in higher sensitivity in low light, different depth perception, and a narrower dynamic range that requires software to manage. Cameras capture a linear, technical record of photons, whereas the brain dynamically processes, color-corrects, and adjusts brightness to create a stable view. If your camera is adding "scene presets" or "scene modes," that might be a quick way to achieve specific looks or handle tricky lighting without manual adjustments, but these presets often fail by producing unnatural colors and poor exposures. They can also make fixing them in post more difficult. 

Anyway, pretty butterfly. I saw two more today but I wasn't available to take pictures. I felt last year was kind of low on butterfly activity. Hopefully with more rain already this season (.25" here today!), we'll be seeing more butterflies.

Taken, taken so easily
To pass into glass reality
Transform, to transfer, to energy

Happy 1st Birthday to Junimoon!

 They grow up so fast! 

Junimoon (AKA, Juni) is very probably one year old today. She was born feral. Her mother, Kalika showed up on the patio on rare occasions, usually at night. Feral male cat, Vit, was protector to both Kalika and Juni. Seven weeks and four days, after Juni was likely born she showed up together with Kalika on my patio. I'm going to cheat a little here because I'm way behind on getting this post together and moving on to some daily chores, etc... 

According to Google AI, "feral kittens are born to wild, unsocialized cats and require quick intervention for domestication. The ideal window to tame them is 2 to 7 weeks of age. They often require slow socialization, confinement in safe spaces, and food motivation to build trust. Without intervention, over 75% of these kittens may not survive their first six months."

It was only about two weeks or so after Juni was introduced to the patio by her mother that I saw Kalika becoming a little aggressive with her offspring, letting her know in no uncertain terms that she was now on her own. They still had some hang time together but Juni was getting fed separately. That first arrival was June 1st, 2025 at approximately 6:30 PM. 

The first time Juni (she had different names early on) came into my lap she was enticed using a feather toy on a fishing line.  There was a little pain involved on my part. There's more about my first interactions here, here and here. This picture is from July 17th, 2025. I didn't prepare for a history lesson on this and quite honestly, I would need to go back, read those linked posts again myself and look at some more photo inventory to get all of the dates straight but I'm pretty sure this was one of the first captured climbs up my leg. She's about 14 weeks here.

 This image is from video, shot on July 20th.

 and by July 25th, she was becoming a lap kitty. This image was also extracted from video off my phone. Juni was adopted inside to stay on July 31st at 6:44 PM.

 And here's Juni, once again in my lap as I prepare this post. She likes to come up under the arm of my dilapidated desk chair which requires a significant butt boost from me,

Here she's watching videos of her kitten self while I was looking for frame grabs. 

 Finally, I had to break out another feather toy to get a full body shot. Happy birthday Junimoon, you are an absolute sweetheart of a kitty! Time for some birthday treats.

 Some specifics might change in this post later when I have time to look back and scratch my head. Lucy, Juni and I may do a little retrospective photo, video and blog post viewing from the bedroom TV tonight. Watching Juni watch herself on video this morning was a crack up. 

I've seen all good kitties turn their heads each day so satisfied I'm on my way 
Take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life...