Yesterday's walk report: Here Comes the Rain Again

Sunday, January 26th

Despite arriving about 19 days too late the current rain is mostly a welcomed visitor in Southern California. There is, of course, a newly revised, special concern over mud slides after days on end of devastating fires. For me, at home, the first measurable rain showed up last night around 8:10. However, hours earlier a small cell drifted over my house and despite knowing that rain was in the forecast I stepped outside to see what was making noise on the roof. I have a rock roof and after so many days of intense winds blowing things around the light tapping on the roof sounded out of place. Plus the rapping, tapping and ultimate drumming of rain on the roof had become a somewhat forgotten event. It was at least odd enough for me to think it was something else and, in fact, I first thought it might be my feral kitty friend, Vit.

Since it began yesterday and up to this moment mid-day, we've gotten .55" with a mere .62" for the season. It's raining right now.

I'll reiterate, I knew we were going to get some rain and from earlier predictions it seemed much of that would be coming today yet despite any of that my thoughts into yesterday afternoon were I would be out walking and taking pictures again today. No dice. I did however get out late yesterday afternoon and again during a precipitation pause this morning to toss down some wildflower seeds. That usually would happen sometime around first seasonal rains the last week of October or certainly before the second week of November, giving seedlings a strong enough start before potential frosts. Winter's final hurrah in this valley. Winter quickly fades into spring. Spring all too soon becomes summer. I'm calling the current effort for seedlings to make it a crapshoot.

Here's a front yard close up from December 28, 2022. The longer leafed seedlings are Dimorphotheca sinuata (an African daisy). I'm also spotting Clarkia unguiculata (elegant clarkia), Lupinus succulentus (arroyo lupine) and amongst the weeds, common mallow and that parsley looking leaf is common storksbill. All of these plants would typically become hardy enough to withstand light frosts early in the coming year. The storksbill actually protects the wildflowers. Although, there were a few occasions where I would cover them with bed sheets. I don't care what the neighbors say.

Anyway, I managed a modest two mile walk yesterday and took some pictures. 

Saturday, January 25th

Limonium perezii (sea lavender). My sister gave me a couple of these plants some years ago. I was quite fond of them but they were somewhat ironically killed off by an onslaught of wildflowers one year.

Here are two images taken in March of 2014 from my front yard.

And one from April of 2013.

Back to Saturday's walk...

This is some type of Aster.

A young mockingbird. There's always a mockingbird.

I think these are Prunus persica (peach) blossoms but it seems kinda early in the year.

This is Erica canaliculata. I should grow some just for the namesake.

These are Argyranthemum, Marguerite daisy.

Unfortunately I still had a close-up lens attached to my 70-300 mm lens when this red-tailed hawk showed up overhead. While I've learned to unscrew that quickly and to palm it in my right hand so I can continue taking pictures without having to put it back in its case I still ended up missing the best shots of this bird.

That's it. I contemplated walking farther but I was on a college campus and from the parking lot off to my left it appeared there were a lot of students. I was more tuned into quiet spaces so I left.

Weekend walk report: Phoenix from the Flames

 I started to write in rather graphic detail about the fires in Los Angeles and surrounding communities here and just cut the dialogue and pasted it into an email to myself. I decided to tone it down. Suffice it to say there's been a lot of tragedy in the lives of 1,000s of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. I also spent a good portion of this disaster lamenting the loss of animal life, the terror faced by innocent creatures paralyzed by fear, the loss of habitat and resources for those that survived. 

Air quality has been a particularly questionable issue for days. The air quality index (AQI) doesn't really tell us how bad the air is. For the most part the AQI for my location has been good to moderate for at least the past few days but it doesn't account for all sorts of particulate matter and chemicals that will continue to be released into the air over weeks following these fires. Friday night I made a decision to walk on Saturday. I needed it on several levels. I walked a little over three miles yesterday. I had Docken's company over the phone which made things much nicer than hoofing it alone. Thank you Docky. Today I walked a little over two miles. For the most part both walks went well, without any respiratory issues. There was some emotional stuff though. 

Here are pictures from yesterday and today with some additional stuff thrown in, just because.

December 28th. Docken also joined me for part of this walk. The only decent photos were of this raven. What you don't get to see is he was busy plucking away atop a garbage can. I’ve taken pictures of him and his mate before. He was busy and wasn’t at all concerned about me getting close. I was between 7’ and 8’ away here. When you get this close you can sort of feel how smart they are. His girl was nearby but she didn’t seem to want anything to do with either the garbage or me.

December 30th, my pal Vit the cat in the backyard. Vit has been a little preoccupied with at least one female feline lately so his visits have been somewhat sporadic.

My last picture taking walk and last walk before the fires broke out was on January 1st and it was a lousy day for pictures. Here are a few.

Audubon's warbler (Setophaga auduboni).

A house finch.

Vit again on January 16th. Vit is Swedish for "white" and is pronounced more like vhoot but I just call him Vit.

Yesterday's walk. Saturday, January, 18th. I finally remembered to bring a wide angle lens (10-18 mm) but I didn't really take advantage of it. Here's a wide shot inside the local botanical garden.

This is an American bushtit (Psaltriparus minimus) and it's a pretty shitty picture. I was shooting blind because of glaring sunlight and I was also having focus issues but I've never caught one in flight before. This is a tiny and very hyper bird.

 On Wednesday, January 8th I decided I should drive my car a little just because It had been over a week since I had driven and I guess I chose to freak myself out a bit over the idea of my car not starting as evacuation zones began moving a little closer to my house. The closest I got was about 1.75 miles from an evacuation warning zone. Anyway, better safe than sorry and at times the Palisades fire looked more threatening than it was. This was taken from my front yard on January 10th. While you can distinctly see some flames the incident perimeter zone was still a little over 4 miles away. I'm so glad I had maps available and know how to use the measurement tool on Google Earth.

The day before, taken from about 45 yards east of the previous shot.

The  drive on 1/8, I went to the local college campus which has an equestrian unit and they were providing shelter for large animal evacuations. The school was essentially campus closed but there was access due to the evacuation facilities. I had seen online that the equestrian center was already at capacity. I've seen a lot of livestock on that campus growing up but this was the greatest number of horses I've ever seen there and I have a long history. Yesterday I walked to the the equestrian unit. I was in tears imagining some of the hardship these animals and there owners might be going through.

I had seen the pig before. It was out among the horses on 1/8.

The donkey is apparently an American miniature.
 

In the course of passing by I saw three, two horse capacity trailers come into the parking lot and witnessed two of those trailers each picking up two horses and hopefully taking them home.

Based on signage on a couple of vehicles I went to this website when I got home. I had wanted to make a donation to some organization helping in the efforts dealing with these fires and chose this one. A secure online donation option is also provided on that web page.

Today's walk, January 19th. Same campus but this time I thought I'd finally get a few wide shots of the campus arboretum.

Not a favorite tree, not in the least. Especially when the winds blow like they did. It's like a giant tiki torch just waiting for flying embers to ignite.

Royal trumpet vine (Distictis 'Rivers').

There were a bunch of these berry poops along the path.

Best I could figure, much of that appears to be, Myrtus communis (myrtle) berries.

Peace.