Today's walk report: 101813

Sing out hare, hare, dance the hoochie coo.

What a difference a day makes. The pain that made me decide not to walk yesterday and put in an evening for recovery... 96.7% gone today. 8.79 km of happy walking took place.

Some of the same old on the walk in regard to photo ops. I felt like walking though so I didn't spend much time trying to find pictures.

I've mentioned before, there is often a 1st picture that I'll take just in case there's nothing else ahead. I wouldn't have minded taking a nice picture of this Buick Skylark but I didn't have the right lens. So I backed up at 70mm. The car is in nice shape but I don't have an understanding for why anybody would want to drive something like this these days. Maybe it looks a little nicer with the top down? I'm guessing this is a 1954. The thing's older than I am.

Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui), looking a bit faded from the summer. By the way, it hit 92º here today. It's October 18th in case that slipped past you or you showed up late. Indian summer they like to call it. I call it the pits.

Selasphorus rufus.

I don't know what this moth is. It never settled down for a moment. It was constantly moving from flower to flower rapidly fluttering its wings. I'm surprised I got a picture at all.

Yep. Same green lynx spider I've posted a few times now but if you look back you will see that its colors have constantly been changing.  From the side it looks completely brown now.

Okay, here it is. The changing colors of autumn in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. This is it!

Today's walk report: 091413

Another A.M. walk effort.

I left at 09:00, 77.4º.
I got home at 11:20, 92.3º.

While this was a much cooler start than the typical end of my evening walks as of late I'm not inclined to applaud the weather. As I type, 2:50 P.M., I'm in my office, I just turned on the a/c and am trying to get this room down from 90º. Meanwhile the front room I just departed now has its a/c working down from 86º.

Anyway, that 2' 20' walk on a comfort level wasn't the improvement I was looking for. Looking at the numbers from this morning, if I want to make this work tomorrow here's the schedule...

07:00, 62.2º
09:20, 79.7º

Sunrise tomorrow is scheduled for 6:36. Hey, you never know, it could get canceled. My getting out at 9:00 this morning took some serious energy.

The walk. This is a nice field for little leaguers. The college players keep it well maintained. Here's a list of all-time MLB draftees from the school. The kids playing today were probably 14-16 years old (Junior League). Here are some moms and dads. Some people show up with their own little private cabanas. I watched a couple of plays, eh...

My 1st observation hitting campus central was not the Allen's hummingbird below but was rather, school in session. Bummer. A couple dozen kids already roaming around the garden with classes on break. So I asked one student and he said, Thursday/Saturday classes, 8 AM - Noon. Although it's important enough for me to have accuracy on this and I see Sat. classes on the school website going as late as 2:35 PM. I'll try to explain without sounding like a curmudgeon here but I find the kids to be rather annoying. It's usually just a few out of a bunch but for example today there was the girl on her cell phone obviously in some sort of break-up drama with that "special person" in her life and she was giving off a vibe that even the dragonflies avoided. Then there was some big dopey guy navigating the cinder path by sliding his feet along, noisy and dusty. You know, like an 8 year old.

Anyway, that break went on FOREVER...

Pretty much the same activity I saw on my sunrise labor day walk.

Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae)

Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis). They were everywhere but hardly ever landed. They were also coupled in flight and it was quite nice. I tried picking spots to focus on and shooting bursts as they entered in frame or close to without any luck.

For the observant: The bee has both antennae the right one is just blurred out from the limited DOF of the lens with a close up attachment.

I don't usually get this close to grass skipper butterflies, so here you go...

Overall? It's kind of nice to have the walk over with today. Hopefully the front room has cooled some (still up to 88º in here), it's 100º outside, I'm going to catch a movie and have a relaxed evening. Thanks!

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: 050313

I am the god of hell fire and I bring you: Fire,
I'll take you to burn...

Whenever I see a fire that got started off the side of a freeway I immediately envision some asshole flicking his cigarette out a car window. I'll go out on a limb here a bit and say that 99% of all smokers are inconsiderate and irresponsible when it comes to their dirty habit. They're also totally self-righteous and obviously full of denial over the deleterious effects of their addiction. Seriously, smokers are about as sensible as a lemming on crack.

I quit a pack a day habit in 2003. I was an asshole too but at least I didn't think the world was my ashtray.

Anyway, to top off the fires burning to the west in Ventura County. I walked outside early this evening and it smelled like I was about 6' away from a campfire. I went back inside to check and found there was a fire blazing now off to the east in Glendale right off the 134 fwy. That's about 20 miles east of me. The air quality was certainly unhealthy so I decided on just a short, easy walk to the botanical garden and back although I ended up doing some extra to see if I could get above the valley enough to get a photo or two showing just how bad the air had gotten. I ended up doing about 3 miles/5km.

Meanwhile, back to the garden...
Blue Nolina (Nolina nelsonii) and Caesalpinia gilliesii.

 

Leucospermum (Pincushion, Pincushion Protea or Leucospermum) is a genus of about 50 species of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae, native to Zimbabwe and South Africa. It's also commonly grown in Australia.

Conejo buckwheat (Eriogonum crocatum), finally opening its buds, also seen below. I've been enjoying the unopened buds for weeks now.

 

This pretty lantana is the variety I was hoping to find to plant here at home but I've never seen it at a nursery.

One of several species of Kangaroo paws in the garden, up close.

The lovely Palo verde flowers once again.

Heading back and another look at the smoky sunset. The sun was red. I didn't try get the balance right because I didn't care and I didn't have the proper lens for this shot. That dot you see is the LAPD helicopter, seeminly on the lookout for any other sparks erupting.