Close your eyes and look at me I'll be standing by your side In between the deep blue sea And the sheltering sky If we find no words to say To the rhythm of the waves Then we'll both surrender there Walking on air *
Today's pictures...
Cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) on lantana.
and move over for the Gulf fritillary or passion butterfly (Agraulis vanillae).
A handsome male Calypte anna hummingbird chilling in the grape arbor.
The same bird perched upon an olive tree branch.
Another young male Anna's hummingbird on Salvia darcyi.
A flame skimmer dragonfly (Libellula saturata).
This is the same flame skimmer dragonfly under very different lighting conditions.
Our parting shot is the young male Anna's hummingbird, once again. This time in cape honeysuckle.
* Lyrics from Walking on Air by King Crimson. I have been celebrating 50 years of King Crimson for several weeks now. Here's your chance to join me...
Yesterday I got out late and reported today I was going to make up for that with a much earlier than normal walk time so I could get some decent photos. I accomplished 1/2 of that goal having left the house at 12:33 PM. On the photos I didn't fair so well. I also decided to lug a tripod. I don't have the lightest tripod and at 5 lb strapped across my back it was feeling a lot heavier in no time. The point of the tripod was to shoot a little video just as a test (testing too lugging around a tripod for over 7 km) and the best candidate for that was green lynx spider #1 and her babies. However... it was way too windy. If I had spent a lot more time than the 6 minutes I ended up spending I probably could have put something decent together. Realize too that about the only time the spiders move is when they are provoked. Most of the spider activity in this short sloppy edit is caused by me blowing on the spiders. They knew the difference between me blowing and the wind blowing. The audio track was intentionally removed.
Here's the link on YouTube, blogger refuses to recognize the URL. It's hardly worth watching but if you do go fullscreen. At least it's only 36 seconds
Before I got to the spiders, as I was approaching the garden, I saw these two red-tailed hawk circling above but unfortunately I was on a walkway between buildings and wasn't able to follow them for a closer shot.
I believe this is a Dark-eyed Junco.
Somebody with too much money making an offbeat approach toward Burbank airport.
Another failed effort following an American Kestrel from street lamp to street lamp never getting quite close enough before the final flyaway.
Music-wise I listened to King Crimson, Live in Mexico City recorded in 1996. It was so much fun I'm going to watch KC on DVD, Eyes Wide Open, 2003 for my evening's entertainment. The link isn't meant to be an advertisement for Amazon, I'm merely referencing the media.
It was about 9:30 PM when I was about to sit down to write a brief note about my brief walk yesterday. Then I looked at my bed, it was much more inviting than my desk chair.
Yesterday I was up slightly before 5 AM, coffee was ready and I was working on waking up before preparing to head for downtown Los Angeles (36.8 km or 22.9 miles) to visit the Superior Courthouse once again. The plan was to get there early, line up for the 7:30 opening of the court and then hustle to the 4th floor to be one of eight lucky attendees for the weekly Probate Workshop at 8 AM. Fun huh?
Waking up meant preparing a list of items for the workshop and in doing so, with the assistance of my good friend "Joe," I found myself answering my own questions. About 30 minutes in I started to realize time would be better spent at home, get myself to the next level and use the workshop next week if I get stuck again.
There's a modest lesson in this, it's something I apply all of the time to creative work, bottlenecks I run into there and especially in my aesthetic relationship with a creative project. Which really means my liking something I'm working on. I'm still learning how to apply this to other exercises in life, things like this probate, things that are thrust upon me which I find to be confusing or otherwise bothersome... I have to remove myself from the element(s) I find intimidating, break everything down and research each piece of the puzzle and then see if any of the pieces fit. Stand back and then circle the enemy. I have to become "indisciplined" and remove the restraint before I can step back inside, become disciplined and discover the solution.
The walk: Phase II of yesterday ended less than 30 minutes before deciding to hit the sack. I spent most of the day looking for one of three people. One of them I know is dead but I still had reason to find him. Finally, about 7:15 PM, I believed I had found the person I needed to find, almost 2 hours later I took a 600 km leap and got an update with a phone number and two addresses. The walk was well before this. I went to a house I could feel I had been inside at some time in my life. A house nearby, only blocks away and directly across from the elementary school I attended. It was the home of a friend of my mother's. One of the witnesses of the signing of her will. I ended up leaving a note on their front door. At 11 PM I was awoken by a phone call and a message to my Google Voice number finding out that the house was a dead end but that was okay, I had already found my direction.
