Today's walk report: 010114

Happy new year!

Man, am I beat! I don't go in for year end craziness any more in my life but I did happen to stay up for the new year last night, watching a movie and enjoying a fire in the fireplace with my cat Lucy. I figured even if I had gone to bed at a normal time I would have been awoken with fireworks at midnight. The fact is, I would have been awoken by sirens wailing from EMT ambulances at 11:04 PM until about 11:15. Seemingly 3 or 4 different groups of emergency vehicles flying by all about the same time. Personally, I've seen bad stuff go down on new year's eve in my past. I'm not going to be a part of that in my present. When the clock struck midnight and of course well before and well after, it wasn't just firecrackers and whistling fireworks, it was full blown explosions. It's a mentality I find beyond idiotic.

This makes sense to me...

Anyway, last time I looked at the clock before drifting off to sleep it was 1:30 AM. Lucy T. Cat had come out from wherever she went to hide during the major explosions and was curled up next to me in bed, twitching away in her kitty dreams. She also decided I needed to get up at 6:20 AM and walked up and down on me until I did. Turns out she had a 1st furball of 2014 hacked up and waiting for me on the living room carpet. That also meant an empty tummy and she wanted her AM treat. I at least made her wait for me getting some coffee brewing.

5 hours sleep. That doesn't cut it for me these days. I was dragging on the walk something serious but I still managed to do 8.79 km. At the top of the hill and pointing toward home I checked the time, 4:22 and decided not to prolong things by trying to wait for the 1st sunset of 2014 and headed home. Sunset was 4:57.

Before all that...

The 1st episode of critters not caring about my presence. These two hares were actually too close to me for me to focus, I had to lean back. Minimum focus is 1.5 meters.

This fellow drove me nuts for awhile, hopping from one lamppost to the next as I approached never giving me a very good opportunity to get focus in flight. That's what I was hoping for, a nice in flight closeup. I think it was the 4th hop between 3 lampposts that it decided it was just going to ignore me and stay put. I even slapped my hand against the hollow metal lamppost many times trying to encourage it to take flight again but it simply did not care.

Today's walk report: 121413

Late again.

I  had a visitor right around walk time so I was late in getting out. Late getting out means not a lot of sun left in the day. Having an old friend stop by was nicer than getting out for my walk on time. I stepped out about 4:20 and sunset today was at 4:47. Tomorrow I think I'll shoot for a much earlier than usual walk so I can find some pictures to take.

4:44 PM.

4:59 PM. Looking north up Mason Avenue.

5:10 PM and heading home.

It was a really pleasant walk and feet aside, almost pain free. Yesterday I complained about tight & painful tensor fascia latae muscles which I believe were causing lower back and some other leg discomfort too. This, by the way, is often attributed to too much time sitting and I think that's a major contributor for me. Today I did less sitting and I also spent some time on the TSLs with this...

I'm not sure where this Morfam massager came from but I'm glad it's here. New these run about $160 (street price). This one is about 22 years old and it works great.

Today's walk report: 102613

I stopped at a yard sale one of my walk friends was having to say hi and see what was up. In part I wanted to get an idea of what he was asking for on "stuff" because I really need to do one of these myself. I got distracted but it seemed as though everything was a dollar.

I also stopped briefly to chat with this old guy on the campus who I'd see regularly on my walks and haven't seen in months. I had been thinking about him recently too. It turns out he usually walks at 4:30 A.M. nowadays. I believe he drives to the campus, parks and walks.

There was an old lady, had to be in her 80s easy, that I would see in the neighborhood before the campus all the time. She'd always smile and wave. Suddenly I saw her with an escort, a guy about 40  and then with him and a woman escorting her. She was struggling. I haven't seen her in months now. It was especially comforting to see her before my mom passed away for some reason. I miss her smile.

She always dressed the same.

Meanwhile the egret was back today for more crawdads. I was under a desert willow and barely had time to get a shot off as it was flying in.

Because of my chit-chatting I was losing light and wanted to get up on the hill for sunset so I didn't hang too long at the garden. I did spy this jack rabbit doing a number on this agave plant however.

Sunset action was pushing a little too far southwest for me to really get a good capture.

But the other side of sunset was nice to walk for the journey home.

Today's walk report: 072713

Another abbreviated walk.

The "kids" (my son, his gf) were on their way from Santa Barbara and I figured either my normal walk but really brisk so I could get back or a short walk to the garden and back with more time for photos and to gather a little peace. I chose the latter.

Not too much going on in the way of photo ops though with some of the "same old" but there was one neat little happening and that was a mass of dragonflies zipping all around me. Maybe 30-40 of them. It was a larger dragonfly than the blue dasher you'll see below and they were doing some mating flight thing most likely. Whatever it was I never saw any of these land. I shot a some sloppy video just to give an idea. Don't turn up the volume because there is none. All you could hear was the lens desperately trying to find focus and me chomping on a piece of gum.

First a few pics.

Had I gotten all 3 in focus this would have been nice. Insects are not very patient. 3 grass skipper butterflies.

Yes, once again, an Allen's hummingbird.

Jack rabbit munching on lamb's ear. Last year there was 20 times more lamb's ear and it was flowering over 1 meter tall. This year there is very little. There was a cabbage white butterfly in this scene but I couldn't get them to quite cooperate for a nice picture together.

As promised, blue dasher dragonfly on Hesperaloe parviflora.

Closer. If you don't disturb them too much, stay still and they will usually land in the same place after flying off to get a better look I suppose. Here I got the opportunity to screw on my close up lens.

Then I irked him a little too much, he moved and off with the close-up lens for me.

One of the Australian native Grevillea 'Superb' flowers shows up since my last visit.

Leptotes marina (Marine blue). This little fellow is about the size of a dime and it drove me crazy with it's indecisiveness over landing for about 15 minutes.

Here's the video of the dragonflies "swarming" for what it's worth.

Today's walk report: 070313

Chatty walk...

I made a wrong assumption that with tomorrow being 4th of July, a holiday, that the school would be sans students this evening so I took my camera and went on my regular trek to and through the campus. I was 1/2 right. There weren't a lot of students by the time of my 6:15 PM arrival but there were enough. I simply feel more relaxed when these kids aren't milling about. Nevertheless, I stopped to take some pictures.

I followed this monarch butterfly for several minutes trying to get a shot. I didn't realize it was so beat up until I got home. I wanted to point out the lack of butterflies here these days. I remember when I was a kid you'd see butterflies all the time, spring-summer. I hardly see any these days. Something's wrong there.

One thing, at least with monarchs anyway, I don't see that there is very much milkweed around. Milkweed used to grow wild nearby but a lot of where I remember this has now been developed or it's simply dead. I know that a lot of herbicides were used just behind my street here when I was a kid. I remember everything dying along a street-wide strip which bordered a railroad track that went several miles through this part of the Valley. It never bounced back.

Monarch caterpillar on one of the few milkweed plants in the garden back 1st week of April. Monarchs only lay their eggs and develop on milkweed. I'm considering adding some milkweed to the "garden" here only for this reason. I don't find it very attractive.

Another furry cactus. This one reminded me of a dream I had when I was probably about 6 years old. There was a cat in the backyard here which had spike-like "fur." It was rubbing up against my legs out by the clothesline and I saw blood on the sheets as they were hung on the line. Creepy huh? Even creepier, I still have a vivid memory of this dream. I never brought it up in therapy.

Another bold jack rabbit. I wasn't going to take a picture, my left hand was busy with my iPod at the time but it just stood there so I popped off a couple of shots with my right hand. Cameras are right-handed, ever think about that? Left handed people like me think about those things.

Unknown butterfly on lantana. Had I been able to get a good shot I'd look up the butterfly or try to at least. It was difficult maneuvering around this bush without stepping on young plants and I'm really good about watching my step.

I was taking pictures of the flowers anyway. The butterfly had surprised me.

So the point about "chatty"... There are no pics of any of this. I had a long first-time chat with Scott today. We've passed each other on occasion for two years now with only nods, waves a quick hi, hello, how are you?, in passing but we never spoke. This time I stopped him. Turns out, although 15 years younger than me, he and his family have some history in this neighborhood so we talked a bunch about how stuff used to be and how they've changed. Scott is considerably taller than me and I say that almost not knowing how tall because then you're 6' 5" and not hanging out with an NBA crowd you don't realize your own tallness until you come across someone taller. At least I don't. He also takes advantage of this extra size and walks quite a bit faster than I do--something I never see. It was nice to finally stop and meet Scott.

Next I saw Robin and Joe who I stopped briefly to ask a question about one of their more immediate neighbors. Turns out they didn't know them. This house I was referring to had a broken sprinkler system for at least two days. No one was home. I pulled good Samaritan for these folks and called the DWP on Monady and someone came out and at least shut the water off. We're taking 100s of gallons spewing out so I'm sure this saved them some money and hopefully this wasn't causing flooding under their house. There are no brownie points in the outside world but I felt good for doing this.

Lastly I met Alex (?) and some other cat who's name I'm even less sure of at the moment, maybe his brother. Anyway, these two guys were out front of their house flying a DJI Phantom Quadcopter with a GoPro Hero3 camera mounted. This is something that interests me a lot--it's just not a reasonable expenditure anytime soon. It turns out they do creative work. I gave them my card. I used to be very deliberate about giving people my card. If we crossed paths 2x, you got my card. I need to get back to that.

My card... (something else I need to redo)

Today's walk report: 063013

Earlier PM walk since temps weren't so high but the humidity was pretty awful. Geez, sorry for writing about the weather so much lately but it really is a factor in how everything goes down this time of year and once again today it was pretty significant. This will sum it up quickly though... At 1:20 PM it was 105º with a relative humidity of 19%. By 4:00 PM it was 87º but the humidity was up to 40% by 6:10 it was still 85º but the humidity was up to 48% and I had already walked close to 1 km. Yuck, is the word.

On to the garden...

Little bunny in the sunny.

If you read this blog yesterday I mentioned that I was expecting these cactus to bloom soon. In fact I was certain that was going to be the focus of my picture taking on my walk today. Not only were they not open but I noticed a few had shriveled into withered black deadness and fallen to the ground. At that point I was looking for something else to do...

Agave attenuata flower (I think)

I took a couple pictures of dead flowers yesterday and thought maybe I'd try that as a theme, then Colin came running up.

I guess I met Colin on one of my walks first time a little over a year ago. He runs with his dogs and then runs for real. If you've ever run with a dog then you know what I'm referring to.

Colin never stops moving but we often chat. Well Colin points out the now infamous non-blooming cactus and tells me that it would make a fantastic time-lapse and that the flowers open AT NIGHT. He has the same cactus in his backyard. And here I just recently watched Disney's, Wings of Life which had a whole segment on bats pollinating certain cactus at night and it didn't even cross my mind. So, change of plans. I decide to walk home, do dinner, feed my spoiled cat, etc. and drive back early evening with tripod, a couple lenses and some make-shift lighting. I'd really like to find an easy small portable lighting solution for night photos but I haven't yet. I was using single or multiple LEDs flashlights to get focus and either shoot with those or on board flash or both. It's pretty sorry lighting but I try.

This was 5 images focus stacked, hand held using just a flashlight.

Same deal with 4 stacked images...

I can't say I'm happy with anything I got. I have to think about this some more. I had put the whole night thing on hold basically because I wasn't happy with the first experiments. It was nice to see these cactus open up though, that experience was fine. Thanks to Colin.