Today's walk report: 051618, The Japanese Garden

Nestled in the not so lovely city of Van Nuys, CA The Japanese Garden is a 6.5 acres public Japanese garden located on the grounds of the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant adjacent to Woodley Park, in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area of the central San Fernando Valley. With a general admission price of $5, or $3 for seniors (62+) and children, it's a wonderful local escape. A slight downside are the hours 11 A.M. to 4 P.M., at least they were for us with the sun high for picture taking from slightly after 11 until about 12:25. Nevertheless it was good fun, quiet and relaxing.

This is a 4 shot panorama taken at 70mm. Please click on the images to see the larger version.

Several Canada geese were mostly resting comfortably in white clover.

This device was feeding water from a small stream behind it. The top bamboo piece would slowly dribble water into the lower one until it was heavy and then that would pour the water onto the ground before returning upward. Transcendental?

Water lilies.

I'll assume the fish are Koi but they all seemed to be a rather drab gray.

The Egyptian goose, native to Africa south of the Sahara and the Nile Valley. Egyptian geese were considered sacred by the Ancient Egyptians.

Mallard ducks, a male and a female. The new Eric and Docken ducks?

Egrets were the most entertaining of the birds we saw.

I waited patiently for the Double-crested cormorant out on the rock to take flight but alas he decided not to cooperate.

 This green heron was a really slow and methodical fisher, contemplating mosquito fish and then shooting his head forward to catch one.

A penny for a wish, seems pretty cheap.

Waterfall, nothing can harm me at all,
My worries seem so very small
With my waterfall.

Day lilies, on the way out.

Thanks for tagging along!

Today's walk report: 050518, BEES!!!

This is a no walk-don't ya dare go outside report for May 3, 2018--a couple of days ago. My girl, Docken and I were home minding our own business, I was in my office she was in hers. Her office looks out onto the front of the house, street view. Mine looks out onto the backyard. Apparently in simultaneous bewilderment combined with a strong sense of freaking out we both exclaimed in hush tones, what the F@%* is going on with all the bees! Seriously, this was like something right out of a Hitchcock movie, outside both our windows, literally surrounding the house, were 1,000s of bees. After wild thoughts of some sort of apocalyptic event taking place we realized that someone nearby must have destroyed or attempted to destroy a hive. Typically the fate for bees that lose their hive is not a good one, there was some sadness over that.

The video doesn't come close to representing what was actually going on outside even if you make the effort of clicking a couple of times to go full screen. With windows closed you could hear the bees from inside the house. The tall flowering spires of the pride of Madeira are always a magnet for bees and while some of the newly arriving swarm seemed to be making their way to those and other flowering plants most of the bees in the swarm were darting about frantically. A few even crashed into the windows right in front of me. They were agitated. It was not something you'd want to find yourself inside of.