April 6, 2019 · 22:23

No Longer Charred

You might remember that we had a major brush fire here back in November. It left tens of thousands of acres blackened and charred.

Then came the rains that caused mudslides, flooding, and rock slides as the denuded hillsides had nothing to hold the soil.

But life is cyclic. (Life is also “psychotic,” but we’re going for upbeat and cheerful tonight, so work with me here.) The plants that covered those hillsides have evolved over millennia to have their seeds survive those brushfires – some even require it occasionally. And all of that rain followed by our current bouts of warm weather lead to…

Five months ago, these hills were black and smoking, not a single green or living thing in sight. Our house and the west end of the San Fernando Valley is beyond those hills about four miles. The fire had started up there and then headed straight south, coming down over these ridges, jumping the 101 Freeway into Agoura, then south through Mailbu to be stopped only by the Pacific Ocean.

You can see the trees that may or may not ever recover. These must have a chance because the crews have already cut down hundreds of them that were totally gone. But while the trees may take years to come back and recover, the grasses and weeds come back much faster. Everything out here is now covered in yellow mustard flowers and purple sage.

It’s hard to see in the shadow and backlighting, but those darker areas are all purple sage, much like the ones I’ve shown you in our front yard. It’s gorgeous.

Of course, we’re still on that aforementioned cycle – all of this growth will turn brown in July, and by November…

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Filed under Flowers, Los Angeles, Photography

April 5, 2019 · 23:17

Mottled Sky

I liked the texture on the underside of this cloud layer a few days ago – not quite mammatus clouds, but there’s a bit of that sort of structure, especially in the lower left above the palm trees.

Simple pleasures. Better when shared.

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Filed under Photography, Weather

April 4, 2019 · 22:02

A Bittersweet Anniversary

Have you ever had a feeling, a tickling at the base of your brain, a twinge in the gut that means that there’s something that you’re supposed to realize, to remember, to be aware of, but for the life of you it’s just slipping away in the fog of confusion and stress? The knowledge that you’re sure there’s something that you should be having an “A-HA!” moment about, but instead your brain is just spinning like a kitten chasing its tail?

What am I forgetting? A birthday? A meeting? Some sort of deadline?

Not necessarily a “sense of impending doom,” but rather a void, a memory that got forgotten before it could be remembered?

Something about the date. April 4th. Oh-four, oh-four.

Early morning, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky…

No, that’s not it, but we’re on the right track. I know that’s today, but this is more personal.

Finally…

On my desk I have a digital picture frame that scrolls through a couple thousand favorite pictures every day. I miss about 90% of them because I’m busy, but it’s okay because they’ll roll back around in a few hours. But I happened to look up at this one.

Ah. Yes. Four-four.

But that didn’t seem to be all of it. So I looked up the file.

April 4th. 2009. Ten years ago today.

I had been out on the tarmac alone, tying down the aircraft and finishing up the routines following the flight. But I wanted to just be doing a happy dance and had no one to share it with. Some poor stranger wandered by and I grabbed him and asked if he could take the picture for me. He was gracious enough to accommodate me.

That paper? That the FAA certificate that says that I had passed my check ride. I was now officially a pilot.

That was one of the best days of my life, a memory that no one will ever take from me. Not on a par with the birth of my kids or my wedding day, but as far as personal accomplishments go, it’s up there with graduation days, finishing marathons, arriving in Europe or Asia for the first time…

Why is it bittersweet? Because things changed, and no matter how much I want to be in the left seat “up there going somewhere,” the fact is that I was only an active pilot for a little over thirty months after this picture was taken. It’s been over 7 1/2 years since I’ve flown, and barring another drastic change for the better, it’s unlikely to happen again soon. Despite the fact that I spend an inordinate amount of time hanging around planes on the weekends with my CAF gig.

So, thanks, subconscious! There’s no doubt that’s an important one and I guess I’m glad that it didn’t go by unnoticed and unheralded – but maybe I could have passed on this one.

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Filed under Flying, Paul, Photography

April 3, 2019 · 23:32

Darkness Is Coming But Spears Of Sunlight Linger

The hills of Southern California are covered with houses.

(And the streets are lined with billboards for cannabis dispensaries, but that’s a rant for another day.)

As the sun sets in the west, the hillsides to the east often find that ONE house that’s lined up perfectly, its windows acting like mirrors to reflect the fading rays of the sun right into my office window.

Like a one-day beacon, this particular house shines. Tomorrow, perhaps a different one.

A week later, that first house is just another semi-illuminated dot on the hillside.

But another house has stepped in, while the first house is no doubt shining bright in another office to my left or right a few windows or a few blocks away.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that this change from day to day is proof that the Earth and Sun are moving in relation to each other. No doubt a careful measurement of the changes from day to day across a tall office building would allow you to calculate that movement and predict the Sun’s position.

If you don’t have a handy twelve-story, steel and glass edifice handy, you could always just use large stone monuments. What’s that sort of thing called again? A “henge”?

And so the darkness comes again. But as has been noted, “We love the stars too dearly to be fearful of the dark.”

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

April 2, 2019 · 23:41

Longing For The Sky

Wishing to be up there going somewhere.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

April 1, 2019 · 23:39

No Context For You – April 01st

I have no clue – it’s on my phone and was taken at 19:07 tonight. All I know is that my personal Rorschach Test sees that big thing on the left with a decidedly Georgia O’Keeffe vibe going on.

I’ve been enjoying my Bose wireless headphones quite a bit, pretty much on a daily basis for at least an hour or two once I get home from the office. The batteries will hold a full charge for close to a week at that rate (about 20 hours total is what they say, and I’m finding that to be pretty accurate) but I usually charge them overnight before they get too depleted.

Until last night.

One feature of these headphones is a little robot voice that will tell you what the battery status is when they’re turned on. (I think the little voice will tell you a couple dozen other things, like if there’s an incoming phone call and so on.) Last night, I found that when the battery starts to get low, you’ll get spoken warnings once the battery is down to about 10%.

I kept going since I was on a roll with a project. I got another warning. Or two.

Then I heard, “My battery’s low, please recharge me now.”

And all I could think of was Opportunity’s last message. “My battery is low and it’s getting dark.”

A headphone’s simple warning about battery status shouldn’t leave you wanting a pillow fort, hot chocolate, and some alone time.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul, Photography, Space

March 31, 2019 · 22:35

Spring Returns – Day Fifteen

For the third Sunday in a row it was nice and warm and sunny today. Two weekends ago that warmth and wonderful weather inspired me to go out and shoot pictures of the back yard as it woke up to the warmer temps and  bloomed and budded. Last week it was the front yard. Today I was out listening to crows (and wondering if they’re actually ravens), investigating a big soggy spot in the back yard (broken irrigation pipe?), and trying desperately (and completely unsuccessfully) to photograph butterflies.

At the back end of the yard, where it goes down over the hill and you have that great view all the way to Griffith Observatory (which is where we started this sequence of posts two weeks ago), the neighbor’s ice plant has come through the fence and is taking over the steps down the hill.

The good news is that ice plant has the most brilliant, vibrant purple flowers. The bees and hummingbirds approve.

And with that I think I’ll let spring get on with its work on its own. All of the flowering plants shown over the past two weeks continue to fill out, and the other fruit trees that didn’t have spectacular flowers are now exploding with leaves. The lemon tree (which is green year around) has a handful of lemons ready to be picked and used in the kitchen. The succulents over by the BBQ have gone thermonuclear, while Lazarus hangs on still.

Tonight we had our first dinner out on the porch, which was lovely, if a bit breezy. The outdoor table is just a few feet away from where the new bird nest is, so for much of the meal we were being scolded by the house finches. They don’t understand that we’re mostly harmless. The mockingbirds were zooming from side to side across the yard, making sure that we knew that it’s THEIR yard, not ours. I love their songs, even in the middle of the night, but if they’re going to have that attitude they need to start paying some of the rent.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled nonsense and falderal!

 

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Filed under Castle Willett, Flowers, Photography

March 30, 2019 · 21:00

Spring Returns – Day Fourteen

For the second Sunday in a row it was nice and warm and sunny this last weekend. The previous weekend that warmth and wonderful weather inspired me to go out and shoot pictures of the back yard as it woke up to the warmer temps and  bloomed and budded. (Read those earlier posts by clicking something at random in that box o’er on the right that says “Recent Post” – after taking the quiz on this one, of course. You were warned last night that there would be a quiz.) This last Sunday, since getting out of the house and walking around in the sun makes my smartass watch happy, I did the front yard. (For the record, wandering around the front yard on your knees with a camera taking pictures of “weeds” and bees will make the neighbors look at you oddly. This is to be encouraged.)

While a lot of what I’ve been posting as signs of spring’s return (bushes, flowers, trees, birds, bees, lizards, weeds) have been “wild,” these are more domestic. Along the far side of the driveway are a dozen or so small rose bushes.

I’ve rarely seen them bloom at all during the eleven months we’ve been here, but at least a few of them seem to be showing up for work now. Not sure if it just took a year for the roses to decide we weren’t monsters, if they’re more seasonal that I thought and we just missed the previous season when we moved in, or if they’re blooming like hell 365 days a year and getting eaten by the stupid rabbits.

Whatever the cause, for now at least four or five of the dozen-plus plants have decided to justify all the water that’s been put on them for the last year. I appreciate it!

I especially like this one, the orange and yellow roses. I’m sure there are homes around that have vast stretches of pristine blooms, carefully cultivated, perfect all year around. This doesn’t describe our house. But I’ll appreciate the little things we have. Too many people take them for granted. I try not to.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Flowers, Photography

March 29, 2019 · 22:51

Spring Returns – Day Thirteen

For the second Sunday in a row it was nice and warm and sunny this last weekend. The previous weekend that warmth and wonderful weather inspired me to go out and shoot pictures of the back yard as it bloomed and budded and woke up to the warmer temps. (You can go see those earlier posts by looking in that box over on the right that says “Recent Post” – after reading this one, of course. There will be a quiz.) This last Sunday, since getting out of the house and walking around in the sun makes my smartass watch happy, I did the front yard. (For the record, wandering around the front yard on your knees with a camera taking pictures of “weeds” and bees will make the neighbors look at you oddly. This is to be encouraged. And is anyone actually reading this first paragraph or just assuming it’s the same every day?)

The neighbors might look at you funny for crawling around on the lawn taking pictures of weeds and bees. This guy is much more paranoid. And vocal. And aggressive.

We’ve been in the new house a bit over ten months now, and long-time readers will remember numerous mentions of the crows when we first moved in. Every time we came out the front door there were a couple of them swooping over the yard and being very noisy. “Every time” as in “Every! Freaking! Time!”

I wondered if all the attention we were getting wasn’t due to the one that started living on the front porch for a few days. I figured it had to have been sick or injured or afraid of flying and I always wondered what happened to it. We never found a bunch of feathers in the yard or on the porch, so if it went off and got eaten by a cat or coyote or hawk, it did it in someone else’s yard.

After Edgar (the sick/injured/psychotic crow on the porch) disappeared, within a week or two the crows disappeared as well. At least, the ones from the nest in the palm tree across the street that were harassing us. There are still plenty of crows around all over – but OUR crows were noticeably absent.

Until about two weeks ago. Now they seem to be back, or at least a similar group with similar habits. Do crows have a pattern of migrations over an area throughout the year? Our baseline is a little small on this data sample, but at least at first glance it seems possible.

The telephone pole by the driveway is their favorite perch. It gives them a good spot to see and be seen, and to squawk at great volume and with splendid agitation. I’m glad that I gave them something to feel threatened by, I guess.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Photography

March 28, 2019 · 23:13

Spring Returns – Day Twelve

For the second Sunday in a row it was nice and warm and sunny this last weekend. The previous weekend that warmth and wonderful weather inspired me to go out and shoot pictures of the back yard as it budded and bloomed and woke up to the warmer temps. (You can go see those earlier posts by looking in that box over on the right that says “Recent Post” – after reading this one, of course.) This last Sunday, since getting out of the house and walking around in the sun makes my smartass watch happy, I did the front yard. (For the record, wandering around the front yard on your knees with a camera taking pictures of “weeds” and bees will make the neighbors look at you oddly. This is to be encouraged.)

In addition to the teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy, little yellow flowers scattered across the front yard, there are also the bane of every golf course on the planet, the common dandelion.

I’m not sure what the fuss is – I’ve always thought that they were quite pretty, and I love blowing on them and spreading the seeds into the wind when they start to die.

These had some sort of tiny bugs hiding in the petals. They weren’t ants, but I’m not sure what they were, aside from camera shy.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Flowers, Photography