Yesterday and last night was mostly rain and that meant not doing much outside, aside from getting out early and doing some weeding. Weeding is a tricky task this time of year. I have two dominant weeds, Erodium cicutarium, also known as common stork's-bill and Malva neglecta also known as common mallow. Tightly interspersed, I also have young wildflower plants, mostly Dimorphotheca sinuata and arroyo lupine (the backyard is another story). It's real delicate removing stork's-bill and mallow without collateral damage. Think of dealing with something akin to a karesansui garden, except I don't have that level of discipline.
To illustrate, this image has everything listed above plus, Eschscholzia californica, the California poppy, I see some Stellaria media, chickweed, also a dandelion plant or two, and Clarkia unguiculata, common name, elegant clarkia. There's one more weed in here I've been unable to identify, it puts out a not unattractive yellow flower kind of late in the game. Now, imagine this over (very) roughly 1,500 square feet. Now imagine plucking some of the undesirable weeds to allow the wildflowers grow room. Sure, "Zen" you say but it's also back breaking.
And as such, the lead-in for today's walk. Nothing is better for my aching back than a nice walk, just as long as I can get far enough along for the walk to take effect (usually okay at about the 1/2 mile mark).
Once again Docken came along via telephone communication and for this I'm thankful. Here are some pictures taken along the way.
We've seen these two red-tailed hawks before The most recent image of the female was taken on Thanksgiving day. The larger bird with the damaged left wing is the female.
Look! An odd sock! It's the sock that created the matching odd sock probably in someone's sock drawer by now. They're looking... where's the other sock?! But they won't throw it away, no, no, no.
No stairs today, I drove up the hill. I brought a bag of dry cat food and these two crows clearly watched me throw it down. They circled quite close above my head while I was doing it. My bet is they waited for some workers nearby to leave and then came back to munch.
It was a lovely day and it was nice to get out. My back remains much better than it was in the morning. More rain is coming this weekend and while school is out for winter break I might take advantage and work in another campus walk or two before the week closes out.
Oh baby...
As always entertaining. I really really like the image of the crow with the mountains in the background. Take care of that back!
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