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

September 6, 2025 · 23:40

Proof Of Life – September 06th

Damn, that was a LOT of lifting and moving and unloading and unpacking and I am SOOOOOO over all of this…

It’s a marathon – good thing I’ve run a few and trained for them. One foot in front of another…

Meanwhile, a 99% full Moon rising over the mountains looks spectacular. We know that I love sunsets, and the sunrises here aren’t bad at all. I guess we can add moonrises to that list.

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Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography

September 5, 2025 · 23:38

Big Things Over The Horizon

It was a nice day here (aside from the small brush fire that they stomped on pretty quickly with a half dozen aircraft and kept to about 33 acres) but out in the desert late in the day there were a couple of odd, big, convective cells building up.

This was off to the northeast, up toward Barstow. Probably at least 40 or 50 miles away, but the cloud tops at 15,000 to 20,000 are impressive.

When we got past sunset here but the cloud tops were still lit, it got better.

There was another big group of cells down toward Palm Springs.

This extremely large, round object was also seen coming up, moving in its orbit toward a full lunar eclipse on Sunday (which we won’t see at all here – enjoy it in Asia, India, Africa, and Australia!).

Once everything on the ground started turning pink, it had risen above the mountains, clouds, and haze to become a bright, white beacon.

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Sunsets, Weather

September 4, 2025 · 23:56

Draft Day

It was Draft Day for our office Fantasy Football league.

Captain Jean Luc was holding the Chiefs flag for the party. I can guarantee I was the only one on the Zoom call that had either a cardboard Starfleet officer or a team flag.

Yahoo was neither supportive nor gracious. Following the draft I got an email from them evaluating my draft as follows:

Paul’s KC BBQ Extravaganza Takes a Detour on the Road to Victory!

Well, folks, it looks like Paul’s KC BBQ Extravaganza decided to take the scenic route during the draft, ending up with a D- grade that has them projected to finish 12th in Beginners Luck. With a record of 2-10-0 on the horizon, it seems like they might need a GPS to navigate their way through this season. They kicked things off with the 7th pick but ended up with a lineup that could make even the most optimistic fan cringe. Who knew drafting four players from the same team could be a recipe for disaster? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket, or should we say, one struggling franchise!

As if that wasn’t enough, Paul’s KC BBQ Extravaganza also has the 6th toughest schedule in the league, which means they’ll be facing some serious competition week after week. With four players on bye week 10, it’s safe to say that the fantasy gods might not be smiling down on them this season. Their best pick came at 91, but let’s just say their worst pick at 7 has fans scratching their heads. At this point, Paul’s KC BBQ Extravaganza might want to consider a new strategy—like perhaps drafting a crystal ball instead of players! Buckle up, Paul’s KC BBQ Extravaganza, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

That seems unnecessarily harsh!

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Filed under Photography, Sports

September 3, 2025 · 22:31

Proof Of Life – September 03rd

Still exploring the new house, still finding new surprises. So far they’ve all been good ones.

For example, I went out today for some air and saw a big lizard on the wall of the neighbor’s house. I hadn’t been around that side much, not much there except for an empty (so far) gardening shed and the two A/C units. But in looking for lizards, I realized that up above, under the eaves, on this end of the house and the opposite end where the garage doors are, there are electrical outlets. Assuming they’re live (and why wouldn’t they be?) that’s going to be a real help when it comes time to start putting up Christmas lights!

And we know how much I love Christmas lights! This new house has a really nice roofline and lots of it. Plus a ton of trees and bushes in the front yard to drape lights over. That might not have been THE selling point that made us pick this house, but neither was it unnoticed when the go/no-go decision was made.

Something to look forward to in three months!

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home

September 2, 2025 · 23:51

Four Seconds Of A Falcon 9 Launch

Surprisingly (I thought the desert was more dry) we had some clouds, a bit of rain, a few lightning bolts, and even a brief power outage. (When this sort of thing happened about ten days ago we never lost power even though there was an outage all over town – I figured our solar power panels had kept us online. Maybe? Maybe today there was heavy enough cloud cover so that the solar system wasn’t producing enough to cover us? I don’t know. It’s yet another learning curve.)

That was all well and good, but tonight SpaceX was launching another Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg. Having clouds covering a big chunk of the sky to the west is a problem.

Being as far away from the coast & launch as we are, the rocket never gets very high above the horizon to begin with. With clouds out there, I was lucky to see the rocket pop out through a hole in the overcast for three or four seconds just before MECO, at which point it went behind all of those clouds in the upper left and was never seen again. (The launch was perfectly fine and successful, I just didn’t see any more of it.)

Afterward, the quarter moon behind the clouds looked spooky and beautiful.

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Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Photography

September 1, 2025 · 23:22

The Mesa Panorama

Blow it up to all of its full sized glory, I’m giving you the raw file, not a compressed version.

This is from a spot across from the Hesperia airport and the BNSF main line train tracks, overlooking one of the dry river beds that lead down from the Victor Valley (Hesperia, Victorville, Apple Valley) into the Mesa, which leads downhill through Cajon Pass into the Inland Empire region between Los Angeles and Palm Springs.

Way, way over on the right you can see a small, yellow building – that’s Don Reyes Airport Cafe, which was pretty stinkin’ good.

Just to the right of center you can see houses, streets, and whole developments down in the gulch at the bottom of the dry river bed. That can’t be a good place to be when the rains come…

That mountain that I was talking about yesterday is just to the left of center. Looking at the “All Trails” hiking app with its topo maps, I’m wondering if that might be Luna Mountain, with Round Mountain the similarly sized mountain to its left. We’ll see.

The plants filling that gulch? I think the taller, more angular ones are yucca trees, while the more squat and bushy ones dotting the scene everywhere are creosote. And the small, scraggly ones in the immediate foreground are tumbleweeds.

Are there rattlesnakes and critters out there? I did not go looking to see. Let’s just assume that there were and I’ll leave them alone if they’ll do the same for me. I’m not a fan of the more venomous reptiles, fine with sticking with the Freds and Bubbas of the fence lizard worlds.

 

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Filed under Forever Home, Panorama, Photography

August 31, 2025 · 23:48

What Is That Mountain?

It’s clearly visible in the default position for the Hesperia Virtual Railfan camera. Three peaks, each higher than the one on the left of it.

This is the view from near the Hesperia Airport, which is just a few hundred yards north of that railcam, looking over one of the dry river beds that lead off of “The Mesa” area of southern Hesperia, leading down into the Cajon Pass.

You can also see it over the wall from our back yard, at about 107º on the compass, so ESE. That makes me think it’s over behind the Deep Creek Hiking Area.

One way to find out! Maybe in the next few weeks it will cool a little bit, I’ll get enough unpacking and catch-up work done to be able to take a day off, and I’ll go exploring.

Stand by.

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Filed under Forever Home, Photography

August 30, 2025 · 23:54

Bird Buffet

To be perfectly clear, because I don’t want to be considered a monster, we have set up a buffet to feed the local birds, we are not having a buffet for ourselves consisting of birds.

In the last month I got two of the hummingbird feeders up and one of the seed feeders, but we’ve attracted enough birds so that there’s sometimes a traffic jam, particularly at the one seed feeder. Today I found more of our bird feeders in all of the stacks of boxes filling up the garage and did some work out on the pergola putting up hooks, then cleaned all of the feeders. When all was said and done, we now have four of each kind of feeder, the four hummingbird feeders at the back over the brick wall and the four seed feeders at the front hanging over the turf.

If you look at the first hummingbird feeder on the far left in the first picture, you’ll see this one wasting no time in testing out the new nectar. I literally had just put it up and walked off to take the picture, maybe ten or fifteen seconds, and this one was all over it. And stupid me was worried that it might take a while for the birds to “find” the new feeders.

Here you can see all eight, so let the feasting begin!

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Filed under Birds, Forever Home, Photography