Things for Which San Francisco Isn't Known

Here are a few things for which San Francisco is known. 

These  first few images are here in hopes of attracting a few viewers doing image searches for the things below. I'm missing images of Fisherman's Wharf, Lombard Street, Alcatraz, Telegraph Hill/Coit Tower, and Levi's Jeans -- also anything about Earthquakes, Hippies, and the Gold Rush. (But at least I got the text in!)

Thanks for visiting, whether new or returning! Please read on.

746 Feet Tall, 8,981 Feet Across(looking a little rusty), November 2011.

More info Here

Beach, Dog, Sunset, Ocean Beach, 2010.

Cable Car in the Rain, November 2011.

Surfers, Ocean Beach, November 2011.

 What San Francisco isn't known for.

Francie, San Francisco, April 2011. (Photo credit: S. Estelle)

Franciscan Manzanita (Photo credit: S. Estelle). More info Here.

Raven's Manzanita, 2010.

More info Here.

Presidio Clarkia, 2010.

Presidio Clarkia. More info Here.

Lessingia doing very well and bird footprints, September 2013 (picture taken on Samsung Galaxy s3).

San Francisco Lessingia. More info Here.

(Then Nassella, now) Stipa pulchra/Purple Needle Grass, Sweeney Ridge, 2010.

Purple Needle Grass. More info Here.

For more indepth and colorful coverage of San Francisco natural history, follow this link to San Francisco historian Chris Carlsson's collection of essays on the topic. For any readers living in San Francisco, or anyone planning to visit, try to make it to one of Chris Carlsson's bicycle tours or public talks. Regardless of the topic, you will be enlightened and inspired to do your own delving into history. 

And, if you are lucky enough to hear of one, attend a Greg Gaar slideshow. It's a must for those interested in San Francisco natural history!

Woodland Plants near Blue Hole, Virginia

Two months ago, Catey and I were just finishing up a trip to Vermont, Virginia, and North Carolina, making stops along the way to visit special people and places. One of our adventures near Charlottesville was a hike with Rose to Blue Hole. Although we put our feet in the Moormans River, we did not swim at this well-known swimming spot. As Rose told us, there had been a renowned rope swing there until Summer 2012, when someone with a chainsaw, presumably worried about liability, took it upon themselves to cut the tree on which it hung. That story is here.

Those guys walked ahead and I stopped to find some old friends in the undergrowth -- woodland plants that I recognized from doing plant surveys in Illinois when I lived there.

I stopped to photo the heart-shaped, almost glisteny leaf of the wild ginger. I believe it has fine hairs on its surface to give it the texture it has. , which was lighted nicely, by the time I found it, by the tall forest above it.

The dappled appearance of a woodland floor in the summer can have a soothing effect on us. However, plants need light -- so leaves of woodland plants have to be ready to capture the few bursts of sunlight that filter through, even in the long days of summer. I don't know whether ginger or hepatica actually follow the sun as it moves throughout the sky, but they may. Plants do this, and it's called phototropism -- here's a link to a video showing it.

Asarum canadense (wild ginger), Shenandoah National Forest, August 2013.

Hepatica nobilis var. obtusa (liver leaf), Shenandoah National Forest, August 2013.

Orb in woods (I'll call it a Virginia Fly Trap), Shenandoah National Forest, August 2013.

Despite Shutdown, the Presidio Remains Open

I'm not usually news-y in my posts. I'm mainly just posting this for you, my friends and family who will probably hear it from me here before we have a chance to talk or text. 

Ugh...the Federal Government has shut down! Citizens are locked out of National Parks. As the article linked mentions, this is really bad news for tourism-related businesses near Yosemite already hugely affected by the finally contained Rim Fire.

GGNRA gate daisy chain, Marin, 2012.

The Presidio of San Francisco, where I work as a biotech, is largely unaffected by the shutdown: we are financially self-sustaining as of the current fiscal year. As such, the Presidio remains open despite the shutdown. 

However, the Volunteer Agreement under which our volunteers work is a National Park Service agreement -- when volunteers donate their services, they actually do the opposite of "waiving" their rights; they become protected under NPS' workers compensation insurance.

I'm selfishly hoping that as a result, I will have the opportunity to lead a few extra bird walks during our regularly scheduled program times for volunteers who still want to come enjoy the Presidio. Maybe my fellow biotechs will want to do plant walks too. My NPS colleagues will have to stay home...without pay, at least until the government kicks in again and they receive back-pay.

How Birds Make a Living on the Coast

I took a picture of the poster below a few years back, when I had biked with my buddy Diony up to Point Reyes National Seashore. A generous acquaintance named Dale, whom I'd met at a large sustainability festival that November, offered us a floor to sleep on, which was something we greatly appreciated. We rode the 35 (or so) miles in the rain. 

Marin County weather - phone screenshot, December 19, 2010.

The next morning, we would meet up with another group of fellow birders to participate in the Christmas Bird Count, patrolling the uplands and shorelines near our assigned portion of the count circle: Abbott's Lagoon. That would also be fairly physically taxing, but rewarding, of course. The round trip by bike and dawn-to-dusk birding we did that weekend is another story.


The poster hangs in the researcher housing near the Bear Valley Visitor Center at Point Reyes. In some ways, I like places like this better than visitor centers. I lived in housing like this for a short spell at Santa Ana NWR when I served my first AmeriCorps term in 1997. (Dale was also serving an AmeriCorps term.) There were so many similarities: ordinary, non-matching furniture in simple arrangements; miniblinds; wall-to-wall carpeting; discarded reading material about local natural history, and wall decorations like maps and this poster. And this one had an outdated, but still apparently used, Nintendo video game system plugged into an old crappy TV. This adds another layer of interest: a researcher's brainless escape from long days of physically and mentally challenging field research.

How Birds Make a Living on the Coast poster. Categories/strategies:  Scavengers; Predators; Seed-Eaters; Insect-Eaters; Fish-Eaters; Dabbling Ducks; Diving Ducks; Food-Strainers; Invertebrate-Eaters.

I thought of this poster a few days ago. I was birding at Crissy Lagoon in the Presidio, leading my monthly bird walk for volunteers in our community-based volunteer habitat restoration program. We saw a rare bird, a northern waterthrush, so I returned later with our office camera, wanting to capture the rarity. While waiting for the waterthrush to reappear (which, eventually he did, and luckily has for other photographers who can do a much better job of capturing it), I had good chances to look at and photograph some marsh birds. Shorebird migration has brought curlews, willets, sandpipers, and plovers to the marsh. This creates a golden opportunity to teach the concepts described in the poster...which I did to two passersby during our bird walk. I had them look through the spotting scope that we were using. The long-billed curlew's bill is simply too long not to talk about. (By the way, the curlew is about chicken-sized, at least.)

Willet and long-billed curlew, Crissy Lagoon, August 30, 2013.

Getting back to the poster, if I could find one I'd buy a few copies. I have looked. It contains so much information in such a great format.

A few details (some blurry and poor-quality -- my bad!) from the poster are below.

Poster details (clockwise from upper left): bills designed to probe to different mud depths; belted kingfisher's fish swallowing technique; heron's fish swallowing technique; black skimmer's dining method and longer lower mandible.

The Mighty Bay

Here is a photo I took on a rare pause as I biked across the Golden Gate Bridge a few weeks ago. It's two frames, stitched together digitally and then cropped to look square. The stitch job is pretty bad, but if you blur your eyes it doesn't matter much.

As I shot this, I thought to myself the caption: "The Morning Commute."

Morning commute, June 2013, San Francisco (stitch of two images).

Of all the photographs shot from the Golden Gate Bridge, how many can capture the glorious might of the Bay? Lately I've been thinking about the Gate itself: not as a deep ocean channel, but rather as a fantastically monstrous river. The mouth of many rivers that gushes out to the ocean, and gushes back in, bringing life in and out with it.

That's not actually the case; it's an estuary, a complex system mixed with both salt and freshwater. I have visited two estuaries where the salinity and purity is just right to permit the survival of a marine microorganism that produces "bioluminescense", or naturally produced light (it's completely unbelievable). I've read that this was once the case for San Francisco Bay -- early explorers documented it.

40% of California's surface area (and a bit of Oregon's) drains into the Bay. Take a minute to appreciate this:

I appreciate the Golden Gate Bridge -- it enables an astounding bike commute for me. But because of the Bridge, the Golden Gate itself is too often overlooked. 

I'm OK with that, though. Sometimes I'm just getting across the bridge myself without appreciating the environs. Sometimes I'm getting blasted by wind and less than fully appreciative of that. But sometimes I stop and peer over to see the porpoises, terns, and cormorants swimming below me. They are some of the benefactors of the tremendous supply of sustenance that gushes on the current under the bridge, mostly unseen to the human eye.

Blossom Petals

Petals from blossoms that littered the back porch in March have now turned to pears that fall when the wind gusts. I tasted one today that had fallen two days ago, and it was marvelous.

Pear blossom petals on the back porch, Spring 2013.

The neighborhood is full of plum trees given away by stains on the pavement below them. (I learned from the purple finches that the blossoms were tasty, mildly sweet.) Some trees have mounds of rotting brown/red plums that give off a boozy smell as you approach. If you look carefully through them, you can find ones that have just fallen and are perfect to eat, only a little bruised after having been released by the tree. But I only eat one or two on my walks now, having eaten up to a dozen on each walk for the last month.

One tree in the neighborhood is a cherry. The only way to harvest them is by shaking, listening and watching for the few that fall, and chasing them before they disappear into dirt or poison oak leaves. After giving the tree a gentle shake, I hold out my open hand in vain, but one day I will have the luck to have one land upon it.

Blackberries are ripe. Days are longer. It is easier to meet our neighbors now.

The Ordinary Extraordinary Junco

A fairly recent series of videos released from a multi-partner project team dedicated to studying and educating the world on the dark-eyed junco recently caught my attention. 

The series of eight videos is 88 minutes long, and can be watched piecemeal. 

http://juncoproject.org/

The subject of the project is a bird that you may be familiar with, and if not, I bet you'll notice in your surroundings after watching the videos. 

These videos provide insight into modern-day field ornithology about one particular species. As you'll see, with as much as people know about birds, each discovery in nature spawns a new series of questions. 

Below is a photo I recently took of an Oregon Junco in the Presidio. Plain, yet beautiful...ordinary, yet extraordinary. 

I have my own personal connection to the junco because I shot one for no reason when I was about 10 years old. It was winter in Wisconsin. The bird, hopping innocently on the ground, was fully entrusted to the safety of the environs of our backyard feeder. I hid around the house corner with my BB gun and fired. My aim was good, and it instantly died. I walked to pick it up, and I studied it. That one action taught me so much about the fragility of life, the consequences of a senseless action, the weight of a bird, the softness of feathers.

I don't think I talked to anyone about that act that day. In fact, I don't think I talked to anyone about it until about a year ago. I have been too ashamed. Yet, I might be learning that that one action was probably one of the formative moments that led me to a lifetime of working to help nature while teaching people what I can along the way.

Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco, Presidio, June 2012.

Fiddleneck

Trad by Barry Phillips

Note: this page has background music --  from the Barry Phillips (no relation) album Trad. To stop the loop, click the pause button (upper left) on the player above, or simply mute your speakers...

Fiddleneck. A satisfyingly fitting name for a relatively unmistakable plant with a flower cluster shaped like the scroll of a violin.

Fiddleneck, East Bay Regional Parks, April 2012.

 Although I took these photos last year near Oakland, this plant is currently in bloom in the Presidio.

Fiddleneck closeup, East Bay Regional Parks, April 2012.

But getting back to this shape. An interesting spiral array of flowers, arranged to accommodate many visiting bees at once.

The plant is named after the scroll of a violin, or cello -- but why is the neck of a fiddle shaped this way? I wondered, is there a chance that the fiddle's neck was designed after the shape of this flower?

This may be more interesting to me because I once played violin. (I probably would have gotten better had I spent more time practicing and less time studying the shape of the thing...) But anyway, I found an interesting blog post that gets into scroll design of the viols (violin, viola, cello, and string bass). Is it a tribute to the written word? Is it homage to the Fibonacci sequence? If you're up for a 4-minute video, pause the Barry Phillips and click here -- warning: you may need to watch it 2 or 3 times: Nature by Numbers.

OK. Did that change the way you see the natural world?

Getting back to the necks of fiddles, you may have read in the Fein Violins blog post above that animal heads were often carved into the necks of viols (as in the cello on the Trad album cover). You can find many examples of animal head (often renditions of lions with long tongues and slicked-back hair) scrolls online, maybe even in the string section of your local symphony. And here's something really cool: a cello with a woman's head for a scroll. Now I wonder -- do any plants resemble this?

Melica - a graceful grass.

This is a graceful grass. I hope you agree that the contrasting colors on the flower are rather attractive.

Melica is the genus, but I'm unsure of the species. I have it narrowed down to a few but I guess I'm too lazy to key it out. I can appreciate it already without knowing everything about it -- exactly what it is called -- but I fully admit this is only justification of my lazy botany habits. I do plan to fully figure it out, but this may not happen for a while.

"Melic" means melodious in Greek. Most of the members of this genus have the common name "onion grass." I don't understand either name.

Melica sp., Marin, March 2013.

I found this individual growing next to a GGNRA fire road that is about a 20-minute walk from our place. We're lucky to have open space so close. We are nestled in a valley that probably once had a great deal of this grass growing here. I am not certain, but I think that ecologists believe it is being usurped by the similar Ehrharta erecta, a weed that dominates similar habitat -- cool, perennially shaded soils in Coastal California. 

Per the California Invasive Plant Council, E. erecta has a uniquely imprudent history of becoming an invasive plant -- it was brought here from South Africa in the mid-1900s and cultivated in Berkeley and Davis as an experimental grass. I guess it performed. I will spare you any photos of it -- I have a very hard time wasting frames of film on nasty invasive plants, strongly preferring natives due to my profession.

Also in the frame are poison oak (blurry in the background, but I remember it being there) and morning-glory (heart-shaped leaves in the foreground), two other natives that are significant components of the system where I took this picture. This was growing along a creek canyon filled with oaks. I am about to walk Bear Dog there now. I will listen for its melody, and search for its onion scent. 

Paintbrush

Franciscan paintbrush, I believe it is called, and this plant only grows in California. Adorned with tropical tones, Castilleja subinclusa stands out rather freakishly from the background coastal scrub and grassland. It seemed alien where I found it, while hiking with Catey on the north side of Dias Ridge in the Marin Headlands, belonging rather in the Costa Rica jungle clinging to a towering tree.

I laid on my belly for this shot, as if I were hiding from some extraterrestrial invader stalking me on the savanna. 

Franciscan paintbrush, GGNRA (Marin County), March 2013.

I don't know much about indian paintbtrush, but there are several in North America. The genus Castilleja host paintbrushes and owl's clovers, all of which are hemi-parasites: meaning they use chlorophyll as well as the sugars of other plants, connected at the roots, for survival. 

Looking for more information about this species, which I did not find, led me to poke around iNaturalist.org for the first time. If you're not convinced of nature's intrinsic beauty and mystery, I encourage you to visit. Check out this incredible slime mold picture, for starters. 

And more from the same photographer: click here. Wow!

Mission afterbar makeout

This is not very nature-oriented (in the sense that this blog is dedicated to), nor necessarily characteristic of things American. It's a long exposure of some people making out after bar time in the Mission last fall. For reasons I don't remember now, I went wandering out late-night with my camera and a tripod at 3am or so, to see what scenes the Mission would provide. I had to go no further than just around the corner from my pad to witness this activity.

I know it's a little voyeuristic of me to have taken this, but I think it's worthy of celebrating. And, the subjects truly didn't seem to care. I set up a tripod, made a few adjustments, and took two 10-second exposures.

I wanted to capture blurred car lights ("light trails"), the sense of motion in the shadows of a bar's facade, silvery wet streets. The making-out couple is hidden just enough to make the scene seem private and seductive. It also adds the mystery of anonymity -- especially not even seeing the person against the wall enough to be able to identify their gender.

Mission Afterbar Makeout, 2012.

But the cars passing make the scene seem sort of ordinary.

Shortly hereafter, the two ladies were joined by a larger group. All walked together down to Mission Street, where one got in a cab with friends, and the other watched the cab go.

Spring changes and new arrivals

Local birds are beginning to nest. As I type, a Western scrub-jay is selecting shreds of coconut hulls from the flower basket lining that hangs over the back patio. It's off to weave those into a nest somewhere. A pair of chickadees has taken a liking to two birdhouses we've hung on the fence, obtained at a recent estate sale in our neighborhood. Perhaps they recognize these houses from their past and are assessing their new locale. They gather the fibrous root matter of Chloragalum pomeridanum that sits staged in the yard, ready for us to plant. They take it in small quantities and disappear into the house with it. They are benefiting from Catey's and my planting delays. But the chickadees are having to compete with crows, which have been raiding the same root matter this morning, either for to line their own nests, or to eat. They are acting fast and eating a lot.

When I'm at home these days, it's difficult for me to focus on the things I "need" to go get done away from home. Having a hummingbird feeder, two suet feeders, and a seed feeder with black sunflower is one thing. But, now, with spring here, nesting activity is becoming a constant draw of my attention. Are the Hutton's vireos singing from the backyard oak going to build a nest on one of its thousand branch forks for me to find? The regular pair of purple finches, whom I can hear crunching seed on the bird feeder when I sit in the kitchen -- where will they nest? They sing in the trees around the neighborhood. Are these California towhees I see going to start gathering nesting materials, or are they just foraging...and ditto for the golden-crowned sparrows?

The yard bird list is at a plateau of 33, with the last three birds to date added on 16 February. Spring migration will be starting soon. What will be the next bird to be noted? I am curious whether next door's palm will invite a hooded oriole to nest. Will stopping-over sparrows follow the cues of locals and visit my feeder? I just realized I don't have a song sparrow on my list, but I heard one sing across the street this morning. Come on over and be #34, I invite him.

One of the things I "need" to go do, and I'm about to do so, is go buy more bird seed.

And find ways to stop feeding the squirrels -- and seal up the gaps in the fence to keep that rogue cat who keeps visiting OUT.

Snow geese, La Conner, December 2012.

(I think) I Found a Chanterelle Patch

I am not sure -- I need my friend Ally to help verify this -- and maybe until September when they are out of the ground again -- but I think I found a patch of chanterelles within walking distance of home. This is very exciting because these are known for their deliciousness. Mushroom collectors, already secretive about their collecting spots for other mushrooms, scarcely reveal their chanterelle haunts.

Although the habitat I was in seems right -- an oak understory in a gully, an internet crash course tells me that I need to examine the gills before truly identifying these.

 I might have found a population of the bioluminescent jack-o'lantern mushrooms, which grow on wood, sometimes underground rotting wood. These would still be a great find, because then I could return to find them glowing at night.

False chanterelles (which are not deadly, just not delicious) have true gills, but real chanterelles have false gills. Confused? Me too...don't worry, I'm not going to go picking any yet. My photos aren't good enough to make the call, and the fungi have vanished now. But I know the spot, and I'll wait until I'm accompanied by an expert to return.

At any rate, with its waxy orange translucent glow, this mushroom I found on a drizzly morning walk is another feature of nature to become excited about, another seasonal phenomenon of intrigue. Just look at trumpet-carrying, tux-laden David Arora on the cover of his wildly popular book, All that the Rain Promises, and More. Who wouldn't want to experience such simplistic joy from nature's bounty?!

Chanterelles? Marin County, Dec 2012.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord: Signs and Biodiversity You Don't See Everyday

JBLM Speed Limits, July 2011.

A speed limit sign for non-civilian vehicles -- trucks and tanks -- dictates the rules of the road at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), near Tacoma, Washington. I would have loved to have seen a tank driving 60 MPH down the road.

My good friend and nature enthusiast Brian worked there two years ago, when this photo was taken. As an employee of The Nature Conservancy there, he spent hours on tractors mowing broom -- and that's not all. Read the full account below.

Meadow deathcamas, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, July 2011.

Death-camas grows in many forms across the US (see my previous post about the San Francisco population on Bernal Hill), and this is one of them. From what I can tell, this is meadow deathcamas, Zigadenus (now Toxicoscordion) venenosus var. venenosus. The species name means "venomous," as if the common name and genus (Toxicoscordion "toxic plant that smells like garlic") didn't already tell you that this plant can kill you.

Right now, death-camas is flowering abundantly on grassy ridges on Angel Island (especially in the burn area from October 2008) and in the Marin Headlands.

This is one of the plants that thrives at JBLM thanks to regular fires, I presume. Some of these fires are conducted by field resource managers like Brian, but much of the acreage that burns there is a result of explosions from Army training operations on base.  

 

Training operations have also been the cause of odd-seeming location signs placed on base that bring a bit of confusion to the civilian. This sign stood near a small false group of buildings used for training. Seeing these signs made the overseas military operations seem far more real to me than news reports. It brought home the degree of culture shock that must exist for the young adults who train in places like this before going into such a foreign place to follow such unpleasant orders.

This huge tract of land (91,000 acres) was originally set aside for military operations, but like the national park where I currently work, this is open space that is set aside from development and pavement. Pockets of open space that still have intact plant communities, and management thereof, are vital to native biodiversity. In a uniquely American dichotomy of aggressive force and pacifistic preservation, areas like these will continue to be vital in the face of seemingly inevitable urban sprawl.

Here are some of the special-status (rare, threatened, or endangered) species that are found today at JBLM: 

Indian paintbrush (Castelleja levisecta)

Mardon skipper butterfly

Taylor's checkerspot butterfly 

Oregon spotted frog

Western gray squirrel 

Mazama pocket gopher

First-hand from Brian, here is an idea of what it takes to maintain and restore healthy natural ecosystems over the course of one year at JBLM. 

Starting in early spring I applied herbicide to early spring weeds, sometimes over large areas where valued natives had yet to appear. For that we used tractor-boom spraying and ATV spot spraying and boom-spraying.  This would be performed in conjunction with mapping populations with GPS.

During my final spring with this NFP, I assisted with collecting data regarding the remaining breeding populations of the Streaked Horned Lark on the installation.

As the season progressed we moved to backpack spraying to gain a more targeted application.  We (sometimes used) a contractor as a labor source, of which I would manage, mix, and designate areas and weeds to treat.  These populations would also be mapped via GPS points or polygons.

Before flowering of weeds, we spent time brushcutting and spraying regrowth of Reed Canary Grass in ephemeral stream corridors to open potential spawning grounds for salmon that swim up from Puget Sound during the next rainy season in winter.

as flowering of missed weedy plants began to reveal themselves we would "dead-head" them by hand-pulling and bagging all viable weed seed that we could find.  This is often done with a contract labor crew ...that I would often lead bilingually.  

Flowering and seeding would end as drying continued and at this point I would determine locations and tractor-mow and brushcut burn breaks for upcoming Rx-Fire.  

Preparing equipment (pumps, drip-fuel, etc) for Rx-Fire would also be needed prior to the burn season began.  We used multiple ATVs with 25 gal pump sprayers, and multiple "engines" fully stocked to hold fire-lines.  These were pickup trucks with 200-300gal tanks or an F-450 flatbed equipped with a 500gal tank and all the bells n' whistles.  Staging water-storage tanks and equipment for upcoming burns would also be necessary.

Burning would continue as possible.  Burning some 2-3K acres in +/- 25 burn units each summer (July-October) When not able to burn we would continue spraying, mapping or dead-heading invasive-weeds, and also prepping future burn units and equipment.

Burning would end with rains and more weeds to treat.  Natives were dormant and new growth of weeds would be sprayed.

Into the winter we would mow scotchbroom to prepare areas for future burning by reducing fuels, allowing a safer, more manageable burn.

 

Planting trees and shrubs along river corridors to assist in shading out invasive Reed Canary Grass can all be done in the dormant season.

Drill-seeding native species over large areas would be done after late winter as day-lengths become longer.

Soon early weeds would show themselves and the cycle starts all over again...

 

Thanks, Brian!

Super Cold / Ice

Seeing a Baltimore Ravens player doing a "snow" angel out of confetti on the artificial turf after the game a few hours ago (on artificial turf) inspired me to do a post about snow. Rather than snow, how about ice? I've been wanting to share these pictures since I had them developed by my friends at Photoworks a few weeks ago.

Over this past holiday break Catey and I were in Wisconsin. We took a day trip with Dad to Port Washington one day (December 30), and the three of us chanced to witness a miraculous display of ice formed on the  breakwater and everything nearby. We wandered slowly down this frozen pier, beholden to this frozen spectacle.  Part of our slow pace was the treachery of walking down a breakwater with a railing in the middle (none on the sides), walking on snow-covered ice, with the unfrozen yet seemingly deathly cold waters of Lake Michigan below us. The breakwater stands about 12 feet above the surface of the water and there are not many rungs for one to use to climb out, if one should fall in.

 

Precarious breakwater path, Port Washington WI, December 2012.

Mostly, though, our slow pace was the result of astonishment, at every step, of the beauty and impossibility of this ice. It surrounded thin branches of shrubs, ten times the diameter of each pencil-sized branch. How did it manage to extend this far vertically without a branch -- or the ice -- something -- breaking? What caused this? Even Dad, who has spent a lifetime near frozen water in frigid winters, remarked he'd never seen anything like it in his life.

Frozen cable and icicles, Port Washington WI, December 2012.

I researched weather leading up to our foray to see what chain of events caused this phenomenon. At first I thought it could have been: 

• Several days of daytime highs around 32° and nighttime lows below freezing. Precipitation each day of less than an inch, of rain that coated the ever-thickening branches during the day, then remaining frozen. Practically no wind, any day.

But it was 44° on Dec. 15. No way, this would have melted it all. So, maybe:

• The steam from the waters of the adjacent Port Washington harbor, coming from wave action creating airborne water droplets from slightly warmer waters (perhaps from the coal power plant nearby), coated the branches, day by day, with fine amounts of airborne mist, that gradually created the thick layer that we see. This was done under the calmest of conditions, with winds of less than 5mph, over about 10 days of temperatures remaining constant, highs at 32° and nighttime lows of 25° or so.

Then came Dec. 20: Daytime highs of 35°, 0.84 inches of precipitation (rain/snow) fell, it was quite windy (12 mph sustained, gusts to 28mph. The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel reported a nasty storm. [Reading the comments to this article, by the way, is pretty amusing. 2logical1 posted: "Its been snowing in WI for how many years now? How much? when?, any thing out of the ordinary we need to know? ENOUGH jeeeeeeeeeez". Haha. This sounds like something  Dad might say, and I'd laughingly agree.] At any rate, the lake effect must have warmed the precipitation enough to make it lose its crystals in the liquid form, and the wind chill froze it into form. This is my final hypothesis, although it's still only a hypothesis.


And it remained below freezing until the day we were there. So, from what I can tell, these perfect plant popsicles were formed during a traffic-halting snowstorm and thankfully remained for us to see them, with clear roads and crisp blue skies.

For the full set of photos, click here. 

Icy aster stalk, Port Washington WI, December 2012.

Castro wires, one bird

This is just a b&w picture of a bunch of wires on a post, taken in the morning, then given a "negative" effect. The bird (a robin)'s presence is enhanced in negative. The original (positive) photo is at the bottom of this page. 

Wires on Pole, Castro, Oct 2012 (negative).

 I was struck by the convergence of wires on this post one spring evening last year. I was waiting for a show at the Castro Theater. The line was so long it wrapped around the corner to the sidewalk in front of these houses. I looked up, astonished at these wires, certain everyone else was noticing the same thing. They didn't seem to. I kept it under wraps and returned later, one fall morning. It was my secret for several months. When I returned, it still was just as astounding to me as it was several months prior.

I guess this is what a photographer, or a poet, does -- sees everyday things as extraordinary. That doesn't mean that everyone would think the sheer numbers of wires attached to this pole to be something extraordinary. I'm grateful that it was to me, because it added something unique and personal to my cityscape.

Wires on Pole, Castro, Oct 2012 (positive).

Lizard Tail

Lizard tail (Eriophyllum staechadifolium) is a medium-sized shrub that grows in coastal scrub. You need to come to California to see this plant, and once in California, head to the Pacific Coast. Once there, find a plot of undisturbed or restored habitat, such as in the Presidio, and you're certain to locate this species. It is especially easy to located in summer months, when golden flowers gracing the domed structure of its wind-sculpted stands gives it away.

Eriophyllum staechadifolium, Presidio, November 2012.

Also note the leaf texture, shape and structure. According to Calflora's incredibly thorough and indepth online California Plant Names dictionary, the Latin name for lizard tail means "woolly-leaved, leaves like lavender." I wonder if the lavender reference refers to the bluish/greyish cast that the leaves have (seen better in color) or their aromatic character. The leaf structure is not like that of lavender. But, the leaves don't smell like lavender -- more like sage -- so I'm not sure if that's the reference either.

To find native plants in California, check out this resource: 
http://www.calflora.org/entry/places.html

For more info on Midwestern natives, here's another online resource: 
http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/

If you have a similar page for your region, post the link in Comments.

Towel Drying

There's something magical about the light behind this towel drying on our new porch. The towel could actually be a sunny swimming pool seen from far above. I'm pleased to have composed this. I never would have seen this with color film in the camera.

We should all strive to use clotheslines if available. Catey and I are fortunate enough to have a Butts Manufacturing Model R400 retractable clothesline on our front porch.  Currently hanging on it: a thrift-store purchased ladies' polyester disco suit; a rug; seven already re-used zipper-lock bags; and a compostable trash bag that has already been used to store organic celery in our high-efficiency fridge, and will be used again for our minimal trash.

Ahh, Marin.

Towel Drying, Mill Valley, 2012.