March 16, 2023 · 23:15

Unusual Growth

To recap (it might help solve the puzzle):

  • We normally had a normal, green, suburban lawn.
  • We got hit with a three-year drought, the worst on record.
  • Water restrictions got put into place and about 99% of the grass died.
  • We’ve now had one of the wettest winters on record.
  • Some grass is growing back, but most of what is now covering the dirt is some clover-like green stuff, with heavily shaded areas getting covered in a dense, bright green carpet of moss

Are we caught up?

Today I spotted something odd growing out there. “Odd,” you say? Well, for starters, it’s bright red…

The whole area is maybe 8×11 inches, the size of a piece of paper. Red stems, red leaves.

It’s ground hugging, not sticking up at all (yet??), so probably not red yucca, which does grow in these parts.

I spent a couple hours tonight trying to google what it might be. I downloaded a couple of “plant identification” apps and they all came up with no matches.

Maybe it’s a moss of some sort? “Red moss” or “red rock moss” pictures look a bit like this. Sorta?

I’m open to suggestions.

Maybe I’ve been watching too much “The Last of Us,” but I’m half expecting to go out in the morning and find a junco or squirrel caught up in those red branches and stems and tendrils, slowly being digested…

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Filed under Critters, Flowers, Photography

March 15, 2023 · 23:48

Fog In The Canyon

This current storm was trying to leave this morning but had filled the canyon below us with fog.

Some think the fog is spooky or ominous. I understand the dangers while driving in the fog, or landing a plane, but I find it calm and quiet.

Through it all I could hear mourning doves crying in the trees. But the sounds of the traffic were muted, dim, distant.

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March 14, 2023 · 23:36

Stability

Going to be another long night if you live below one of the burn areas. Fortunately, we don’t. It’s just going to be wet. Still a lot of evacuations up in NorCal as they’re waiting to see if the hills slide.

Image: Wunderground

As I’ve noted, California is getting clobbered for weeks now with storm after storm. The snow pack in the Sierras is at over 225% of the average. There are levees breaking and flooding and mudslides all over, especially in the mountains.

Yet we need the water, desperately. This comes after four years of massive drought. The problem is that, while all of this rain and the snowmelt runoff will go a long way to refill the reservoirs, it would take years of this to replenish the groundwater. So the drought really isn’t over, just a little bit better.

And in the bigger picture, the thing that we’re losing in climate change is stability. We used to have variations from year to year of course, but now things are getting wackier by the day.

The Arctic ice pack is at near record lows and over time is going down every year. The ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting. The jet stream and the ocean currents like the Gulf Stream are shifting and showing signs of breaking down. Which will in turn bring hot, tropical air up near the poles and “polar vortex” cold air down to the mid-latitudes. Which in turn can melt the Arctic ice faster, and the permafrost, which releases methane. Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas, so that feeds temperature increases, which melts more ice and permafrost, which destabilizes more weather systems that we’ve relied on for millenia, which in turn…

Can you say, “positive feedback loop?” Sure, I knew you could.

The big question is whether we’ve actually stumbled past a point of no return, a tipping point. That might have happened without us even knowing it and from here there’s no way to reverse the trends in time.

Other systems in our lives have similar issues. How do we know when things are irreparably broken and how do we know when to keep fighting to fix them?

I’m stubborn (otherwise known as “too stupid to know when to quit”) most of the time so I’ll keep fighting, but things are looking unpleasant for the future. Let’s hope there’s enough of us clever monkey descendants to fix what we’ve broken.

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March 13, 2023 · 23:37

Random Old Photos – March 13th

Ten years ago.

I was stuck someplace I didn’t want to be (Coalinga), trapped (car had died at the beginning of a holiday weekend), trying to make the best of a bad situation, trying not to do anything stupid that would make it worse.

This gopher was my entertainment, minding his own business in a local park.

Plus c’est la même chose, as the kids say.

Happy Monday!

 

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March 12, 2023 · 23:44

Titles Are Hard

I don’t know what to call this – I’m out of clever, it’s been a weekend, my brain is fried. I’m in Monday-adjacent mode.

Around 17:00 this afternoon (PDT – have I mentioned how much I despise Daylight Savings Time? Hint: I have.) I was out in the front, looking for F-18 fighters. I found them, they came right over our house, loud and high, probably at 20,000 feet or more, after they buzzed the Oscars opening down in Hollywood.

I noticed that big chunks of the lawn has been taken over by these little yellow flowers. Remember them? There was one right next to the driveway and my car’s tires all last summer through the worst of the drought.

Now with all of the rain, there’s a little grass coming back, but tons of these little guys.

There was one solitary bee out there, going from flower to flower to flower, just staying a few seconds at each. I watched for a while to make sure it didn’t miss any. It didn’t, except for one. But after it got to the edge of the field, it hovered for a second, then came back to find it. It hit the one it had missed, then flew off toward a neighbor’s yard.

Go get ’em, Mister Bee!

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March 11, 2023 · 23:45

Scud Running

If you’re a pilot, you’ll be familiar with the term “scud running.” In more formal terms, it means trying to squeeze between low clouds (scud) and the ground or minimum altitude restrictions. (That “hard deck” they’re always talking about in “Top Gun?” It’s that.) One’s often flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) where you’re not necessarily talking to Air Traffic Control (ATC). One might not be rated for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). One might not want to be bothered with all of the paperwork and control and planning involved in IFR flight and want to stay in the “easier” VFR flight rules.

In more snarky terms, it means “maintaining visual contact with the ground while avoiding physical contact with it.” To be legal in most controlled airspace you need to be 500 feet away from the clouds and 1,200 feet above the ground (depending on what airspace you’re in) with three miles of visibility. But if you can get into Class G (uncontrolled) airspace it’s 500 feet from the clouds and one mile of visibility. So if you get down low and can squeeze between those hills and mountains and the ground and that lowering cloud deck…

This is dangerous. Often VERY dangerous. Legal? Probably. Sometimes. Maybe. -ish.

Lots of things can go very wrong very fast. There are more and more things like cell towers, power lines, wind turbine towers, and buildings out there to make something very hard and very bad to fly into. At such a low altitude, if anything goes wrong (like engine problems) you have very little room for error or maneuvering. Scud is often found near the edges of thunderstorms and that can mean downdrafts that just reach out and slap you out of the sky. The clouds can close in and leave you in IFR conditions, blind, close to the ground, and in a world of hurt.

Got the picture?

The same thing happens in life. You take a “small” chance and get away with it. You know better, but it’s convenient and you just need to bend the rules a little bit, not really break them. Then the next time it’s easier to do it again. And the next time you bend the rules just a little bit more. You keep getting away with it. Again, and again, and…

…and then things go pear-shaped and sideways and you’re seriously up the creek.

I think this is basically the overall story arc of “Breaking Bad.”

Admire the scud in the sunset. Avoid the scud running in a plane or in everyday life.

Just something to think about.

 

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Filed under Flying, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

March 10, 2023 · 23:24

Back At The Builder’s Ball

The Builder’s Ball is the annual fundraising gala for Homes For Family, where I used to work. (Here, here, and here, plus probably some more.)

The key phrase there is “used to work.” What’s up?

Well, I went to several Builder’s Balls before I worked there because The Long Suffering Wife was on their Board of Directors for several years. Then I worked there for four years or so. We’re still friends with some of the Board members, and I still keep in touch with several of my co-workers from my time there. We got an invite to go, so…

I will say, it was great to see people there, many of whom I hadn’t seen in person in three and a half years. (COVID helped that delay.) It was interesting seeing the event when I wasn’t working it.

Now it’s time to make sure I get together for lunch with some of my old friends from there. They were working tonight, we need time to schmooze and hang out and catch up. And not wait another three and a half years.

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Filed under Habitat For Humanity, Photography

March 9, 2023 · 23:45

Goodbye Moon

Yet another monstrous set of storms coming into California. Three years of massive drought (or is it four?) left us with serious water use restrictions, and now we’ve unexpectedly swung to the other extreme.

Image: Wunderground

It’s on our doorstep, with the rain starting in the next hour or so. We’re catching the tail end of it in SoCal. Up north, by San Luis Obispo and the Bay Area, there are already some mandatory evacuations for flooding being put into effect.

Image: Wunderground

I just hope it’s nice and dry and clear for NEXT weekend – on the 18th and 19th there’s a massive airshow at Point Mugu and I haven’t been to one in years.

Meanwhile, the 22º arc around the moon was the last we’ll see of any celestial objects for a couple of days.

Stay safe, folks!

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March 8, 2023 · 23:36

Not Hitting On All Cylinders

The last few weeks have been… “intense” would be a good word. “Good” intense, as it were, goals to be met, dragons to be slain, sleep to be lost, but still.

This morning, scraping my sorry ass out of bed and preparing to meet the day, I froze at one point in my routine.

Something was off. I was fuzzy, couldn’t put my finger on it quite yet, but something was definitely off.

Hey, Siri! Tell me about dissociative disorders!

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Farce, Photography

March 7, 2023 · 23:42

A Breathing Moment

Breathing is good.

Not like, breathing as opposed to suffocating and dying. “Breathing” as in, take a couple of minutes, watch the sunset, let your shoulders relax, unclench your jaw, and try to somehow get that stupid old Pet Shop Boys song that you hate out of your head on 24/7 repeat.

You know. “Breathing.”

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography, Sunsets