Category Archives: Photography

September 20, 2025 · 23:43

Two-Tone Squirrel

The pictures, when viewed in detail, show a slightly different picture (literally), but to the naked eye, the squirrel stealing bird food this morning seemed to be decidedly two-toned, with a light brown, almost “dirty blonde” coloration accompanied by a white collar around his neck and forward shoulders.

You can see the basic pattern as described in this thumbnail above, but if you click on it and view the full-sized picture, you’ll see a lot more detail that is lost at first. I particularly like the white polka dot or speckled pattern on the back 2/3 of its body.

Not the sharpest picture I’ve ever taken, but the only one where I caught it more head on, proving that it wasn’t eating the bird seed from the ground, but was instead filling his cheeks with it.

Hilarious. Then it got in trouble and pissed me off.

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Filed under Critters, Forever Home, Photography

September 19, 2025 · 23:06

Thunderstorm Adjacent

Yesterday I was working and knew that there were light off & on showers about, but I heard the thunder as my first sign that something more substantial was near.

It wasn’t quite overhead and we never got a real downpour or hard rain from it, but the rumbling announced its presence with authority!

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Weather

September 18, 2025 · 22:01

Peering Through The Layers

We again had a bit of weather pass through today. Nothing too violent or wet, although there were showers and some thunder heard.

By sunset it was broken clouds, with multiple layers at different altitudes, with holes here and there, so I could watch different layers fly by in different directions and speeds.

Best of all was the view where, while it was just past sunset here, off to the east probably 25-30 miles there were thunderheads towering up over the horizon, brightly lit in brilliant white.

Then in just a few minutes (4 minutes between pictures to be exact) that blinding white started to turn pink and orange. (No extra charge for the blurry hummingbird zipping by on the right – it was pissed that I was standing next to its favorite feeder.)

My vision of a boring, hot, windy, unchanging weather environment have (fortunately) been disproven by three fascinating rain storms in less than two months.

Variety *IS* the spice of life!

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

September 17, 2025 · 23:24

The Fall Is Coming

And, no, I’m not talking about the Fall of Western Civilization and the collapse of the American government and the Second Civil War – although we most certainly can’t rule those things out, as batshit insane as that might be.

No, I’m talking about the season. Fall. Autumn.

We might be living in the middle of a gazillion acres of desert with dirt, tumbleweeds, Joshua trees, creosote, and the odd cactus, but inside the tract walls, in our front yards, mixed in with all of the rock and talm trees and “drought resistant landscaping,” they put a few oddball, water-sucking decorative trees. Our neighbor’s yard has a white birch. We (on the right) have a very nice maple tree.

Very, VERY FEW native maples found in the SoCal desert. Or anywhere else in SoCal. Maybe a few in the mountains. Maybe.

But here we have one and having spent formative years in the forests of Vermont, I’m loving this decorative addition to our yard. In two months in might be fully engulfed in yellows and reds and oranges. For now, there are a handful of pioneer leaves, hinting at the autumnal glories to come.

The Fall is coming!

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography

September 16, 2025 · 23:00

They Don’t Like These

One thing I’ve noticed in refilling the birdseed feeders is that the bottom is always full of these little, round, red seeds:

I don’t know what’s wrong with them – do they not taste good? Are they difficult to pick up? Are they hard and a pain to crack open?

It’s yet another mystery.

Maybe the squirrels will eat them? Waste not, want not!

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Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Photography

September 14, 2025 · 23:23

The Back Wall As A Tripod

I still haven’t found all of my tripods out the the PODS following the move, but with the almost full Moon near the horizon a couple of days ago and the back wall there to set the lens on (and very, very short exposure times for the very, very bright moon), the results didn’t suck.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography

September 10, 2025 · 23:22

Proof Of Life – September 10th

One small but non-trivial change in moving to the High Desert in general and to this house in particular is our morning wakeup routine. Our bedroom windows face east and we’ve gotten into the habit of leaving the plantation shutters open, so the Sun is shining in about 6:00 AM.

The iPhone can’t even come close to recording the pink and orange hues that greeted me this morning. Imagine the saturation and warmth turned up to 11! The Sun was still just below the horizon, but the sky made it look like we were inside of a ginormous neon tube. With the shutters, pergola, bird feeders, and high-tension power line towers in the distance all silhouetted against the glow, it was fantastic.

It makes it tough to sleep in, but we’re adjusting – and views like this make it worth it.

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography, Sunsets

September 9, 2025 · 21:55

Progress Moon

We have all kinds of weird names for various seasonal full Moons these days – pumpkin moon, harvest moon, bullseye moon… I figured I would make up my own – this is the Progress Moon!

That’s it, 92% illuminated, rising over the house and the two PODS storage units sitting in the driveway. I was moving the cars out of the driveway and onto the street since they’re going to be here (in theory) at 7:45 AM tomorrow to pick up the PODS unit on the right.

This move! DAMN!

They say that which doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Bullshit. Between packing, getting out of the old house, closing escrow, filling these PODS, unpacking all of the “primary” stuff that the movers brought up, getting to a functional state since I still have a job, trying desperately to stay caught up at work through a particularly busy time of year to begin with, unpacking the PODS… Actually having this shit put me in the hospital sounds like a break at this point.

But a push over the last weekend got the first of the PODS emptied, so tomorrow it gets picked up. With luck I’ll finish getting the other one emptied out this upcoming weekend – so, by Christmas, right?

It’s a good thing we’re loving the Forever Home, ’cause we’re NEVER leaving!

All hail the Progress Moon!

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography

September 8, 2025 · 23:46

Beauty In Desert Weeds

It’s the freakin’ desert, after all. Okay, Death Valley’s worse, but even just a couple miles from civilization it can get brutal out here. Hot. Dry. Unrelenting. You have to be tough to survive in the wild under these circumstances, and tough often is the same as “something only a mother could love.”

Most of the yard, front, back, and sides is either “desert landscaping” (i.e., colorful gravel) or artificial turf. Along the edges, all over, are these scraggly-ass looking things. I really need to find the yard trimmer at the front of the PODS unit and clean them up, that is, chop them to bits and dispose of them.

But there’s this one by the front sidewalk, right next to where I found my new little lizard friend:

What are these pretty, pink flowers at the base? At first I though it was a piece of plastic wrap or trash that had gotten caught there, but they’re definitely flower petals.

Maybe?

Upon closer examination, those flowers have a woof and a weave to them. They’re frayed on the edges. They’re fake.

So that leads to the next mystery – who put them there? It certainly doesn’t look random or accidental.

Does our quiet little suburban neighborhood have a secret weed decorator?

Was it the lizard?

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Filed under Flowers, Forever Home, Photography

September 7, 2025 · 23:47

New Little Lizard Friend

Being the desert and all, I was expecting more lizards up here than at our old houses in West Hills. God knows you can find enough pictures on her from the last ten years of both fence lizards, large, small, and tiny, and the occasional alligator lizard (good sized critters, especially the ones that came up through the toilets). But through the first six weeks, it’s been slim pickings.

When I was taking the trash bins out to the curb last Thursday evening, this tiny dude was chilling on the curb. I figure the west-facing concrete was probably still warm after sundown and it was sucking up every photon it could get.

It didn’t move until I got really close, then it scooted under that big bush. The markings are noticably different than all of those we had in West Hills – they were more scaly and “granulated” with the classic blue bellies and throats. While I didn’t get super close and I didn’t get to look at it at length, it seems that this one is more striped than spotted.

I’ll keep my eyes (and camera) open to watch for more of the area lizards and get more data.

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Filed under Critters, Forever Home, Photography