An inquisitive old fart with a camera
The crazy plant: I took a picture when it was almost the height of the fencing. It was very pretty, very symmetrical. Then it reached my height, and then the gutter, and then some of the branches fell over. Their ends then turned skyward and kept growing.
I suppose I should get rid of it, but instead I’m amazed by it, growing out of a tiny bit of sand that rarely gets water.
Around the corner from us.
Several months ago, we were quite dismayed to find loggers destroying a significant number of trees (and hence shade) where we walk dogs. I just ran across this photo I took, illustrating why it’s less dismaying than it might seem. My shoe is size 13 (45), so that stump grew from nothing to 24″ (61 cm) in 18 years.
In a wonderful book The Hidden Life of Trees, the author tells of doing a core sample of a spruce sapling, the width of this thumb (say, the first two rings) and about a meter tall. He was astounded to discover it was 80 years old!
So the trees will be back, as long as people stop setting fires.
It is widely accepted now that the last big fire was the work of an arsonist.
A first!
We have never before seen a tortoise on the dog walk. You think that, if there were tortoises around, the dogs would have encountered them. But they acted absolutely mystified by this thing that wasn’t moving, but they knew by smell was alive.
We gave them a few minutes to be curious, then left the tortoise in peace.
Ah yes, like the IRS notice giving me 60 days to respond to an earlier notice I never received, which arrived 105 days after being mailed.
Up through January 2007, when we left the US, going away for a few days would result in a bin like this awaiting our return.
Since then, I’m pretty sure ALL mail we’ve received since would not fill one of these.
Though we rarely heard planes before, despite being close to the airport, it wasn’t because they weren’t there. Now we rarely hear planes because planes are rare. Last couple mornings I’ve heard them, gotten curious, and seen some interesting patterns on flightradar24.
Here a flight that has already circled overflew the airport and circled some more off our coast.
I guess because of this flight in from Paraguay, which also had to circle, presumably for the plane already on the ground.
And then the plane circling offshore has to wait for an incoming flight from Madrid.
And finally gets back on final approach.
And so this morning:
More circling, this time to allow a flight from Panama, seriously behind schedule, land.
Wheee! Why do you do this? I hear you ask. Well, it’s more interesting than cutting the lawn in sweltering heat, for one thing….
A couple of photos taken the other evening on iPad. No editing other than resizing.
This silly little car has caught my attention several times. I don’t know what brand it is. I don’t know if it’s ICE or electric, and I don’t care because my mind is overwhelmed by one question: if I wanted to design a car that looks like a cartoon, could I outdo this?
On New Year’s Day 2009 a huge fire deforested much of the area in which we walk dogs.
Almost 12 years later, in October 2020, another fire raged through.
Fortunately, many of the trees survived this time.
14 months after the last fire, last week, another big fire.
And yesterday on the dog walk we see this:
Wind from east northeast. The others came from the southwest. No sign of any activity. Around an hour later, Syd heard a helicopter (we leave from his house to walk), and this morning it appears to be out.
Almost 12 years between fires, then 14 months, then just over a week. Following that progression, we could have expected the next fire in 3-½ hours. Glad it didn’t happen.