Today's walk report: 081713

The sting.

It was an odd day. Even though I got up early, 6:30, I kept finding myself falling behind with every task at hand. Not that I really had a schedule to adhere to but everything seemed to move in slow motion or have this hiccup feel to it. I had planned to be outside before 8 AM to water. That also meant laying down some mulch that I picked up from the city yesterday.

Here's a couple of old shots illustrating what that's about. The Cherokee is ancient now (1993), it can be vacuumed. I've filled up the back of that more times than I can remember over the past couple of years. I just shovel it in the back with the back seat down. There's a sheet laid down but that's more to facilitate getting the last of the mulch out of the car than trying to keep things neat. It's filthy in there but the mulch is free and it borders on compost. The soil here at home is like clay so this was a cost effective method to try and get it to be workable for growing new plants once again.

Anyway, what happened once I finally got to this and it was already 93º outside, was me filling up a large shovel and taking trips back and forth from the car to spots in the yard where I wanted to lay down the mulch. Somewhere around the 10th shovel full a bee had apparently decided it liked something about that mulch in the back of the car and I regretfully missed its presence whilst pushing mulch onto the shovel with my right hand. The bee took issue with that. Now without too much background story because this is already pretty boring--I was always led to believe growing up that I was allergic to bees. I often questioned the validity of this claim but I never wanted it tested. Bottom line... it hurt like a bitch but I was fine for the most part after the initial agony subsided. Thank you for caring.

Here's the deal with me and bees. I often tend to get very close to them...

Even closer...

and I enjoy having a good rapport with the little fellows.

In my confusion after the bee sting I ordered a $30 pizza (it won't happen again) just BECAUSE...

Evidently being 4 miles from that shop meant I had to pay $4 on top of the price of a rather exorbitantly priced large pizza with 3 toppings. Then I tipped the driver. No offense Barone's but $4 is a gallon of gas. I felt a little sorry for the driver thinking the delivery charge isn't going to him, or not much of it would and how it must adversely effect his tip situation. Obviously, it was his car.

So pizza and a movie. I saw the 2nd 1/2 of this on NetFlix, leftover from when Time Warner dropped my connection last night. I thought it was pretty decent but wonder how I'd react had I not such a keen memory regarding the Zodiac killer back when it was happening. At 12 or 13 when that started it was pretty creepy and the media really made a point of talking about how much ground this guy was covering from SoCal (near here) up to the Bay Area (San Francisco, etc.)

After that it was Dodgers baseball and me dozing off once Philadelphia got a hit. Dodgers won 5-zip.

Top of the 9th and 6:00 PM I was finally off to a late walk. A short walk. A not too exciting walk.

More bee... A black carpenter bee. There are more than 500 species of carpenter bees in 31 subgenera so take your pick.

Then these guys again. Boxelder bugs. They're everywhere and you know why? 'Cause they're doing this ALL THE TIME. They don't have a mating season they just mate. The narrow-leaved milkweed is censoring the action a little but trust me they are coupled and they do everything together like this.

Lantana up close.

Today's walk report: 062813

Hot and miserable...

It was 96º and just about 7 PM when I left. By the time I was in the garden, slowing down to look for photo ops, I was soaked with perspiration. You can probably smell me from there. At 2:30 AM, this morning, that's 4 hours away I need to have gotten at least a couple hours sleep in because that's when I'm getting up for the start of the Tour de France. I'm watching that on an iPad, just as I did last year.

So... trying to get some images up quickly so I can get out of here. I'm sure some babble is forthcoming but for now just pictures. Okay, there's a little babble.

 Hand held 7 image focus stack using a flashlight for illumination.

Boxelder bug on milkweed.

Hot dog on a stick.

Flashlight so I could focus and get the camera to flash. When I first saw him/her I thought it was dead. Guess the heat was too much. It couldn't have cared less about me being there.

This is from one of the two rather miserable agapanthus stalks I got in front of the house out of many plants put in early spring.

Straw flower, batch #2.

Gold Star Esperanza (Tecoma stans)

Today's walk report: 060113

June, she comes in blazing.

My A.M. plans were to get out early and start digging, moving plants and planting some others before it got too hot, only thing was I didn't foresee just how hot it was going to get and how long it was going to take me to get stuff done. In retrospect, I should have thrown some clothes on right at 6:30 AM and headed out but I didn't get started until about 8. If you glance at yesterday's report, you'll see what I was putting in the ground. I also had to move some stuff, like 4 perezii statice because I'm not very good at this gardening stuff and when I started I made a few poor logistical choices.

I only had one one hole left to dig but it was the biggest and I wanted to think about it because it's the first tree I am putting in (the Crape Myrtle) and a tree is a big deal isn't it? I mean at this stage in my life a newly planted tree could certainly out live me. So I took a break. Besides it was heading into noon and I hadn't eaten yet.  As it turned out, that was it for the day's yard work effort. Temperatures went into the 90s quickly and by 2 PM it was pushing 100º. It felt worse though. When I went out to survey my earlier work at 3:20 it was slightly over 104º but it felt like I opened the door to the convection oven while baking cookies and stuck my head in. It was hot! So I showered, changed clothes and waited for my walk... and waited and waited...

Finally about 6:20 it was 83.2º outside and 84º with the AC on in my office so I figured, time to go.

Air quality was again pretty bad and my guess was the Santa Clarita, Powerhouse fire was still way out of control. Once I got some elevation that was confirmed.

But first....

Boxelder bugs. I always see these bugs coupled like this, usually walking across the sidewalk. This time there were several pairs on narrow-leafed milkweed along with 100s of these yellow aphids. Those are not the young of the boxelder bug. I have no clue as to who their parents are. For the most part the boxelder isn't considered an agricultural problem but they certainly are everywhere around here.

More tiny flowers. I thought I had a better composition than this. I have to say I was perspiring profusely. This "day cream" (there's so much of this crap here) I tried, Desert Essence SPF 15 just before leaving seemed to contribute to my perspiring and it was also beading up and sitting on my skin. I wasn't comfortable and the two paper towels I brought with me were quickly soaked. Anyway, this wasn't making picture taking any easier.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was waiting for this agave stalk to open its flowers. Today I started to think this might not be such a grand event, with a few rather banal looking flowers open. At least now I know this is, Agave celsii.

There are several mystery eucalyptus in the garden. This is one of them. I've mentioned before there are more than 700 species of eucalyptus, mostly native to Australia and I'm not about to figure out what's what. At this point I was trying to get a few more images to fill things out here.

One of the Opuntia genus in the cactus family, Cactaceae in bloom.

Finally, back to the air quality. Without going into the issues on my dirty camera sensor again but just to let you know this was cleaned up a bit on that level, this image should give you a pretty good idea of just how much smoke is surrounding the area. This is, of course, looking west. The fire is to the north. Santa Clarita is 23.34 km or 14.5 miles north of where I'm standing.