Today's walk report: 062913

Brutal.

We hit 107º today, I went out walking after 7 PM and at 95.5º--it sucked.

To top things off with the Tour de France starting today I was up at 2:30 AM after finally dozing off sometime past midnight. I napped some with 100 km left in the race and I napped a little more after thinking I needed to be productive, clean house and go out and at least check up on the yard--make sure plants weren't bursting in flames. That was a big mistake. I got carried away with ripping out a bunch of woody alyssum and kept going after that. I was drained. Right now I'm struggling again to get some pictures up and then haul myself to bed. It's 11:30 PM and I'm setting an alarm for stage 2 of the TdF at 2:20 AM. Yikes!

I had this feeling I wasn't going to get anything interesting on camera and quickly responded to this guy turning onto the 1st block of my walk. I've seen him before, always on weekends. It appears he likes to do an early evening spin from time to time. It looks like fun, but at 6' 5" I'm pretty sure I wouldn't fit.

Another sort of after thought capture, these are the grasses planted at the entrance to the campus. I was almost subconsciously taking pictures I think just to get something and get through the walk. This mark is about 1.2 km into the walk. That's usually where I kick into full gear and transcend issues if I have them but the weather was just kicking my ass.

I don't recall seeing these yesterday and there's a lot of them. My guess is they will bloom in a day and be dying the next. Stay turned tomorrow.

 En masse.

 

Remember the Century agave with the really tall stalk which that mockingbird is always on top of? Somebody cut the stalk down. Presumably this was to gather the bulbils (the offspring) but when they took down the Octopus agave stalks a year ago they left them on the ground so new plants could start in the same approximate location. This stalk went bye-bye.

 Octopus agave stalks May, 2012.

The bulbils from those stalks about 10 weeks later...

 Some bottlebrush (Callistemon) I've probably posted before.

 Creepy "furry" cactus thing.

Dying can be pretty too. Dying is a popular activity in the garden right now.

Tiny Water Gum (Tristaniopsis laurina) flowers. 

Another flashlight lit 3 image focus stack whilst also juggling 4 bowling pins and reciting the alphabet backwards. I WAS going to bring a few rubber bands to see about rigging the flashlight to my left hand but I forgot. Next time. Pink Evening Primrose (Oenothera speciosa.)

Kinda of an "eh" sunset.

Must sleep. Thanks for joining in on my walk. 

Today's walk report: 062113

1st day of summer, I'm not really looking forward to it either. It's gonna be brutal.

Pretty much just a few photos today...

I'm going to avoid the egret jokes this time. There's something about this bird that tells me it's the same one I've always seen but it is decisively bigger than last siting.

 

With the kids coming back for summer school and me skipping the garden for the past 4 days I missed the Century agave's full bloom. I don't have a definite ID on this by the way, anyone is certainly welcome to correct me. This was a not so controlled effort to do a "panorama" of the plant to give an idea of size. Yes, the mockingbird is up top.

There are flowers which haven't opened but much of it looks like this up close.

Coming down the hill on the way home I noticed the 1st of these guys. This occurred last year too. Presumably this is some ham radio group who gets together annually and has their little amateur radio party on the hill for a weekend. Ham is actually a derogatory term, with the same origin as the term "a ham" for a poor actor.

Egretfully, that's all I have for you.

Today's walk report: 052413

Turtle eggs...

Mostly pics.... So tired.

Revisiting the straw flowers. This is a 9 image focus stack.

Another Southwestern fence lizard. Male I believe.

Female Anna's hummingbird. I have not seen many Anna's hummingbirds since March. It's been mostly Allen's hummingbirds. This is a reversal of last year as I recall.

One more, same Anna's.



Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) on Agave americana, commonly known as the century plant.

Just a few of the 1,000s of flowers on the Agave ocahui stalk. The entire stalk is about 3m tall. These plants are monocarpic, once agaves flower they die and it typically takes years for them to flower.

I'm pretty sure this is the same red-tailed hawk I've taken pictures of twice before.

 

Taking off after something in the distance....

So I went to look and see what it was... some trouble with the eyesight or merely a practice run?

Then back up to another lamppost. When she (I just feel that it's a she) left this post she flew past me ridiculously close, around about my elbows. I have a very out of focus photo to prove it.

Meanwhile, this dove was watching on.

I spent most of the time watching this turtle (red-eared slider) laying her eggs. I observed 3 eggs come out and it seemed like a real serious effort. I was about 6' away. The oddest part to me was how far she was from the pond, it was easily 40 yards (36.57 m) and this ground is like rock. She's actually on the edge of a path for the garden and only about 10' away from a classroom door. Looking at everything between the pond and where she chose, it seemed about the worst place to me. But hey, I'm not a turtle. The mulch you see she must have kicked over from about a foot or so in front of her. It was pretty interesting to watch. Certainly more so than it will be here.