Bay Area Fall Color: Madia and Anaphalis

The faded stalks and flower parts of this year's non-native wild oats (Avena sp.) serve as a blurry context to the green and yellow coast tarweed (Madea sativa) in this photograph. It was a windy day, and I used a tripod to stabilize the camera to create the blurry effect of the loose grasses. Since that was the effect I desired, I stopped down the aperture to allow a longer exposure.

The tarweed was growing vibrantly, its stiff stems resisting the same breeze that tossed around the grass stalks. This was on the Alta Trail, GGNRA, just uphill from Marin City, where a Best Buy just went out of business, and a now Halloween superstore seasonally squats. 

Tarweed and oats, Alta Trail (Marin), Fall 2014.

Here's a closeup of the tarweed itself.  This particular individual had a special symmetry to it. In general on this plant, I think the toothed petal tips are interesting.The black flower centers are loaded with seed to collect starting in October, if one can tolerate getting the sticky tar on one's fingers while extracting them. That tar gives the unopened flower on this plant its glistening appearance. 

Madia sativa closeup, Alta Trail (Marin), August 2014.

A few days prior, I had mountain biked home down the Julian Fire Road, the section of the Coastal Trail connecting Conzelman and Bunker Roads. This is a treat, rolling down toward the ocean, really only hearing wrentits, wind, and crunching gravel; sometimes seeing a bobcat on the lowest portion near the historic fire range. It is a treat that must be paid for in sweat and hard breathing. San Francisco and Marin Cyclists know the name Conzelman to be synonymous with exertion.

On that ride, I stopped to capture a picture of pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea), shown below. This is another fall favorite, found across most of North America. It's named after its pearly white flower clusters, which remain into the winter and spring than one might expect. 

Pearly everlasting, Coastal Trail, August 2014.

This roll of film is proof that it may be better not to use old film that has been sitting in a garage for nearly a decade. It was free, yes, but seems to have literally lost its luster. In some ways, it's a cool effect (one may even call it "old-school"), but given the choice, I would opt for rich color. 

I hope you enjoy these two California native plants.

Different Views of Ivanpah Solar Energy Facility

Ivanpah Solar Energy Facility (from the northwest), April 2014.

Back in May of this year, I posted a photograph that I shot out of the window of the plane I had taken on my way into Las Vegas. At the time I didn't know what it was called, nor had I been able to locate it on Google Earth.

Well, I got the roll developed from the way home, and that revealed I'd taken another photo of it. So, that led me to decide that I needed to learn more about this place. 

Through my membership with the California Native Plant Society, I should have been able to figure out that this 1,600-acre facility is one that has been under discussion and debate for some time now. Actually, that particular debate is finished, since the facility, called Ivanpah Solar Energy Facility, is now in operation. But the overall debate continues to intensify.

Renewable energy has been coming face-to-face with conservation in California, especially in the public (BLM) lands of the desert, and CNPS has been trying to give a voice to the ancient plant communities that can be impacted when facilities like this are built on otherwise pristine land. Aside from plants, wildlife such as tortoises, bats, and birds (see articles below) are impacted, studies are showing.

Ivanpah as viewed out the plane window (from the east/northeast), April 2014.

The human population continues to grow. The UN expects that our current 7.0 billion population will exceed 9.6 billion by 2050. Much of this population, as it has been since the industrial revolution, will live in large urban centers. No doubt, we need to find ways to create power other than the pollutive and non-renewable coal- and gas-burning power plants; or nuclear, which despite being highly productive, generates wastes with no clearly acceptable long-term disposal plan.

When I first heard that California was committed to providing its utility customers up to 33% renewable energy by the year 2020, I was excited. But, through economic incentives to large power companies, the promise of jobs, and the view that solar energy is clean, Ivanpah represents the form it's taking.

We must find ways to generate power in cities, where people need it. We also must find new ways to conserve energy. If we must build large-scale renewable energy plants, let's do it on land that's already disturbed; if done on private land, it can be used to increase the local county's tax base. (An old car sales lot in Albuquerque comes to mind...)

Click here for a closer look at some of the 300,000 mirrors that reflect light to the steam boilers.

Here is an aerial view of the world at night, compiled by our friends at Blue Marble. The map is centered near Las Vegas. This gives one an idea where the power from Ivanpah is going.

Scientific American, August 2014
Solar Farms Threaten Birds

AP, August 2014
Emerging solar plants scorch bird in mid-air

Desert Sun, April 2014
Birds going up in smoke at Ivanpah Solar Project

And finally, an optimistic video from BrightSource Energy released in September 2013:
Ivanpah: a Compilation

What to do about it? A few organizations -- California Native Plant Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and Audubon California, to name a few -- have been taking action. From what I can tell, the main activity in which these groups are engaging is advocacy: suggesting better ways to locate these facilities. However, the Center for Biological Diversity has launched a lawsuit* against the US Department of the Interior for allowing these facilities to operate. 

In the meantime, it seems "streamers" will tragically remain part of the Mojave sky.

*note that this action specifically mentions the Yuma Clapper Rail, a federally endangered bird species -- which tells me that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) is not powerful enough to make a case for the swallows, warblers, and other birds -- not to mention insects and bats -- impacted by the facility. This attests to the power and value of the Endangered Species Act, but also indicates, to me, someone with little knowledge of law, the weakness of the MBTA.

Velella Velella

The By-the-Wind Sailor is a most interesting creature. Known worldwide by its scientific name Velella velella, this jellyfish-like creature floats freely in the Pacific Ocean. Its tentacles are for feeding and to create air for buoyancy, and a stiff ridge on its back acts as a sail to propel it -- literally where-ever the wind blows.

 

When living, Velella are purplish-blue, a color they derive from their diet. Apparently their indigo tint is a mechanism to deal with the incredible amount of sun they are exposed to, from above and from the sea's reflections. See the General natural history section here for more. 

Depending on where you do your research (or, which branch of the Internet you browse), you may learn that:

• Velella is a communal organism (chondrophore) -- each tentacle is a separate living thing, and all tentacles floating in the same connected unit are actually just helping eachother out (like a Portuguese Man-o-War);

~ or ~

• Velella is a single organism (hydroid polyp) -- each floating body is its own separate living thing. Apparently, this is what more recent research has revealed, but I could not find that research, and it is easier to find seemingly reputable sources that claim the former.

Regardless, this summer seems to be a particularly "good" (depending on how you look at it) summer for Valella observations. They are washing up on the beaches all over the West Coast this year. They're such a popular observation that even the  San Francisco Chronicle has covered them recently.

Although I haven't seen them in the four previous springs I've spent here, they are apparently a fairly common vernal phenomenon in the Pacific Northwest and points south. But it's currently August and they continue to wash up, since starting in mid-July. According to this article, jellyfish in general currently abound in our oceans, and it's probably due to an imbalance in the ocean's overall health. It is also an El Niño year, but apparently its effects are expected to be mild, if anything at all, this year. Here's a great blog post explaining all that.

This morning, Catey and I observed them at Tennessee Beach. This small pocket beach has uplands immediately adjacent to it -- so as they have dried, the Velella have blown up into the coastal scrub. This creates a curious sight -- round, papery white jellyfish skeletons on the coastal hills. As Catey observed, it looks as if trash had been dumped on the beach. 



The skeletons are tough and pliable, more resembling plastic than paper. The crafty might find a way to stitch them together into clothing or bags.

"Ah, to be brainless and worry-free" was a comment I recently wrote to my good friend Toni in a discussion we were having last week about Velella. The closing sentence in the Farallones newsletter article (also linked above) led me to this chuckle of a conclusion.  These creatures' fates are solely determined by the shape of the sail that their genetic makeup creates on their backs. For the philosophical, this birthright is one worth exploring and pondering (to what coast would I have drifted if I were born a brown-haired lefty?), as we reflect on the vast scope of the natural world in both space and time.

All photos on this post were shot by me at Rodeo Beach, Marin County, California, 8/14/14, on an old roll of Mitsubishi MX-II 100 ASA film.

Sunsets

Catey (& Bear),

Here's to many more sunsets together. 

Love,

Steve

Escalators

24th Street BART Stairs and Escalator, (Halloween?) 2011.

Ever since about age 7, I have had a tremendous respect for escalators. It was then that a loose shoelace on my Keds shoe wormed its way into the toothed crack on the edge of an escalator at a mall. It was like a movie where the victim is oblivious, and doomed. The lace slowly lost its slack, then tugged, and pulled on my foot, tightening the shoe as I pulled away in horror. As the mechanized steps churned upward, I quickly began to envision the loss of a leg, and I pulled...pulled! The white rubber on the side of the shoe neared the jagged chrome jaw's grimace at an even pace. Rubber entered the jaw silently, pinched between the moving parts, as my foot shrunk back, into a tighter and tighter fist, away from the mechanical menace. The deli knife. Meanwhile, inches away, miles from the focus of my attention, some sharp metal object was slowly fraying the shoelace. Just as the escalator reached the top where another jagged set of teeth glistened in wait, at once the lace sheared, the rubber flap fell, separate from my shoe, and I launched, unscratched but forever scarred, to the mall floor, the only sound in my ears my own helpless shriek.

Nowadays, I enjoy photographing their steps, which turn into a blurring river when a long exposure is employed.

I think the above photo must have been from Halloween. Doesn't the guy ascending the escalator look like he's wearing a jail suit costume? I am not the best about notetaking when I shoot, so I can only guess that's the case. The roll was developed in November 2011 (remember film? no date-stamp on the file), so that strengthens the case. 

I shot the photo below in Vegas this past April. Without a tripod, I was lucky to notice that a railing is positioned perfectly for a camera. You can guess what my decision was. First, what better way to kill time while waiting for your bag? That's what I figured, even though I didn't check any bags. 

First Las Vegas Decision, April 2014.

With my rediscovered love for escalators*, I was curious, and had to do a quick Google search on "escalator function"...somehow I didn't get that far, but I found this. Here's a video that I'm certain would go viral with a little editing and a fitting soundtrack. The title is also unfortunate and -- don't worry -- very misleading. [Really, really dumb title, guys.]

-- follow up edit, 8/16/14: The following video should certainly be referenced. I think this is what I had in mind in the above paragraph. Since this has already been done, really nothing could be done with colorful balls on escalators to come close.

Sony BRAVIA Bouncy Ball Advertisement.

*I know this is obvious, but this is the great thing about the internet for our generation. So many things from our past that inspired curiosity or wonder when we were children, before the internet, and only encyclopedias, can now so easily be learned, or re-learned. 

The Earth is Expanding

Surely you're familiar with the term "wormhole." This is an internet time-burrow that one enters into when a topic crosses one's mind. If you google a single word like "Chee-tos", the search engine returns a thousand tangential keywords, videos, images, items available for purchase, and soon you've made a bad decision: a) Slouched for 3 hours over a laptop watching war archive films; b) Purchased a box of a thousand discontinued keychains; or c) Applied for a falconry apprenticeship in Brazil.

The one I entered into this afternoon is one that I don't regret. I think I've just been converted to believe that the Earth is expanding, rather than believing what I've been taught all my life: that the seafloor is spreading, and parts of the crust are burying back into the mantle simultaneously.

Here's how I got there.

I recently ordered a book off Amazon for an amazingly low price. (I don't recall what got me on the internet that day, but it wasn't specifically to buy this book!) I first saw it in a bookstore last Christmas and was tempted to pick one up for one of the frequent-flying members of Catey's family. America from the Air, co-authored in 2007 by  Daniel Mathews, a natural history writer, and James S. Jackson, a geology professor at Portland State. It's written for commercial jet passengers (and employees) who share my habit of gazing at landforms and civilization-caused shapes, and guessing what they are as I fly. I have photographed only a few because of the low quality that usually ensues through those plastic double windows. Here's one near Las Vegas showing a solar farm that I've tried unsuccessfully to find on Google Earth. 

Update: see http://americanature.blogspot.com/2014/09/different-views-of-ivanpah-solar-energy.html

Where the Sun is Grown, near Las Vegas, April 21, 2014.

Accompanying the book is a CD-ROM with a nationwide flight map and USGS Map #i2781: The North American Tapestry of Time and Terrain (downloadable PDF file). Zooming in on the Great Lakes, after some study, I thought to myself that it looks like the Great Lakes sort of exploded from the center of Michigan. Can see what I was imagining? Different colors reflect different ages of underground geology -- click on the link above to see the entire map and its legend.

Geologic Bubble Centered in Michigan - Source: USGS i2781

So I googled: "is the earth's volume increasing". The common secod way of digging further into our wormholes is the Wikipedia page. And, I was in.

It turns out there's a comedian and graphic artist Neal Adams who has promoted the concept of the earth expanding. If you want to save yourself from the risk of wormholing, skip Wikipedia and watch this 10-minute video. I think you'll be convinced too. (Forgive the odd soundtrack that spans from 2001: A Space Odyssey to the Nutcracker Suite.)
 

What's up? Dogwood.

Spring is well on its way. I am well overdue in posting due to a month full of travel -- first to Las Vegas and then to Palm Springs: two otherwise uninhabitable desert oases built and thriving on will power and stubbornness, seemingly. I did bring a camera both places, and you can expect to see some content from them soon. 

First, a bit about Cornus, dogwood. Many are familiar with dogwood, or at least aware that there is a shrub called dogwood. My favorite thing about the genus of plants is the "dogwood test" -- when one pulls a leaf apart width-wise, making a horizontal tear, fibrous strands within the leaf hold it together. It's the coolest thing! And a good way to tell whether you're looking at a dogwood. This is illustrated here.

But if you aren't feeling like mutilating an innocent shrub, you can look for strong venation in the leaves -- studying the photo below may help. Also, look for opposite leaves and branches. What do I mean opposite? The leaf stems and branching come off of the larger branches beneath directly across from each other. For an example of this, look at the branch toward lower-right-center below. It is like an inverted "Peace" symbol without the circle around it.  Can you see it?

Most shrubs and trees are branched "alternately", or as one goes up the stem, the smaller branches are arranged one, then another upward and across, then another, etc. -- not paired. 

MADCapHorse is a mnemonic device I just learned from the blog brilliantbotany to help remember the groups of plants that are opposite-branched and opposite-leaved. The first three letters, M, A, and D stand for Maple, Ash, Dogwood; Cap represents the honeysuckles Caprifoliaceae; and Horse chestnuts are not to be forgotten as opposite either. Elderberries are also opposite but no longer in Caprifoliaceae (now Adoxaceae); and buckeyes are too. MADCapBuckingHorseAdox is more like it.

Cornus sericea (red-osier dogwood), Marin County, April 2013.

And, I might as well throw in a stitched triptych (stryptich? trypstitch?) of Bear on the local woodsy dog path. A good place to hear Swainson's thrush sing this time of year. Above him is a large oak, and below that are many wild plums or cherries (both with alternate branches).

Beardog checks out the path to Eastwood Park, Tam Valley, CA, April 2013. 3 separate frames stitched together with Hugin.

BioBlitzed!

This year, for most staff and interns in the Golden Gate National Parks, March 28-29, 2014 was defined by BioBlitz. The term "bioblitz" currently has no formal definition, but it's used with increasing frequency for those in the natural sciences. A bioblitz (n.) could be defined as: 

An inventory of a given time constraint, usually 24 hours, in which all living things in a defined unit of land and/or water are located and identified. In a bioblitz, expert scientists from multiple disciplines (botany, zoology, mycology, etc.) are invited to visit the defined unit to undertake inventories according to their skill and interest.  Public participation (see also citizen science) is generally integral to a bioblitz.

That's my own definition. I'm sure it's more concise elsewhere, but I'm rolling with it. 

In our case,  BioBlitz (with two capital Bs) was all of the above, but specifically the one that National Geographic sponsors. National Geographic has been in the process of choosing a national park each year in which to conduct their BioBlitz. They announce the following year's selection at the closing ceremony for the current one. They've done it for 8 so far, including ours; next year, as they just announced, will be at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park. And the tenth, to be announced next year, will coincide with the 100-year anniversary of the National Park Service in 2016.

So, a year ago, it was an abstract concept that was blocked off on our calendars. We knew it would be something incredible and unprecedented. Thanks to attention to detail by dedicated staff and interns from the National Park Service and The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, by the time early March rolled around we all had a fairly good idea when and where to be during the chaos. 

The planning paid off -- the events, from what I experienced, were quite streamlined. About 9,000 people and over 300 scientists flocked in from other parks and academic institutions. One father/son came from Hawai'i because the dad wanted his son to experience it. What a way to travel!

Sam Hasek enters bird species seen by bicycle on smartphone via the iNaturalist app. Photo: Anand Varna.

The species were catalogued via the smartphone app iNaturalist. If you've got a smartphone, I encourage you to download it (free) and start using it to explore your local patch. It's one of the coolest uses of technology that I've seen, and gives me great hope. I've been kind of fearful/resentful of the encroachment of technology into our lives (except for nature-related blogs, ha ha), but I feel like iNaturalist is a good way to get people outside to start working on their "Life List", or list of all unique species they've seen in their life.

Moreover, iNat also encourages one to participate with a larger community of people across the country and world who are experiencing nature on their own level -- from novice to professional. As an iNat user, you are able to ask for help identifying what you've seen from other users who may be more familiar with a particular animal, plant, fungus, whatever. Got a moth in your pantry? Put its photo on iNat, call it a "moth", select "ID Please", and within minutes someone might tell you what it is. 

Now that BioBlitz is over, the dust is settling -- and it's back to doing what we love: working with volunteers, planting a few more plants as the rainy season comes to a close, and pulling lots of weeds. There's a bit of postpartum depression circulating as this milestone has passed us. But the ray of light is that this is really only the beginning: 2,700+ students came during the event to get inspired to learn the wonders of their local national park, and many of us have been inspired to collaborate with eachother and the public in new ways. 

My BioBlitz went as follows:
Friday morning, I was one of a group of scientists assigned with a station to host busloads of students from Dianne Feinstein elementary. Situated with the Golden Gate Bridge as my backdrop, I was given about 10 minutes for 5 different groups of 10-15 5th graders. My job was to tell them about birds. I decided I'd tell them about bird biodiversity there; then I had them listen to bird song for exactly one minute and describe what they heard to the group; then they had some time to use binoculars. One kid, when I asked what he saw, reported, "I saw a beggar" on the Golden Gate Bridge. (I didn't put that on iNaturalist.) 

Friday afternoon, I co-led a nature walk with some other great scientists from the Bay Area. We had placed coverboards -- old plywood boards in contact with soil -- to encourage salamanders, lizards, millipedes, isopods (pillbugs and roly polys), and other critters to take refuge under them. Then, during the walk, we revealed the critters. We also took note of plants, birds, butterflies, whatever the group could identify. It was a great convergence of skill sets that made us all want to do more than just a short 2-hour walk. 

Left with some daylight, I went birding and was lucky to have a red crossbill land right in front of me, bathe in a puddle, then disappear into the canopy. I think it was the only red crossbill inventoried during the count period of Noon Friday to Noon Saturday. (150 bird species were tallied across the whole park during the event.)

And speaking of BioBlitz magic -- before the above walk began, a few of us were lucky enough to see a majestic adult bald eagle fly over our heads. This was in a place where they are very unusual. Swept away in the moment, I announced it loudly to about 30 people who were there, hoping they could see it and photograph it (I guess I said something kind of cheesy and patriotic, but I really don't remember exactly). Unfortunately, it soared away, but it was a powerful moment.

On Saturday morning, the 7-11am birding-by-bike inventory that I led ironically saw some of the heaviest 4 hours of rain that the Bay Area has seen in 6 months. But spirits were high, and the group of four, later three of us, stuck it out, enjoying the much needed rain, and cataloging 44 bird species. This included the elusive Wilson's snipe.  

In the blogs/news:
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/03/biodiversity-gold-photos-from-the-golden-gate-bioblitz/

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Teams-tally-biological-oddities-on-Bay-Area-s-5359003.php

Townsend's warblers singing

In the Presidio, Townsend's warblers began singing their full breeding song last Thursday. My coworker Diony and I noticed that they had not been singing Wednesday, nor any day before -- no, it was Thursday that they began singing. And, it isn't as if the Townsend's warblers are all concentrated in one location in the Presidio. They are nearly ubiquitous: in the coniferous and mixed tree plantations, in stands of willow with the yellow-rumped warblers and ruby-crowned kinglets, and even in isolated cypress trees surrounded by low-growing vegetation.  That day, I observed them singing in three very distinct and separate places, one well out of earshot from the next. I posted this observation to our local Yahoo group SFBirds, which local birders use to communicate with one another, and others had observed the same or similar.

With all the mysteries of nature that exist, I thought it was pretty cool to capture this event. Did a new wave of migrants arrive the previous night? Did the hormones of all the local wintering birds suddenly spike? One of my SF birding mentors Matt Zlatunich once used the phrase "they are all responding to the same cues".  Matt and I had been observing a mixed-species flock of migratory songbirds with very different plumages, life histories, and final destinations northward. I like this phrase because, to me, it means yes, we humans can observe birds' presence and some of their behavior; but a combination of many, many things that we may not know have brought them in front of us for viewing: the position of the stars in the sky; the precise length of day; barometric pressure; wind patterns; pollen in the air; stream flows; the sound of the surf below as they fly in darkness, thousands of feet above the ground.

I probably could have noticed the onset in Townsend's warbler song in previous years, had I been more in tune to it. The strange thing for me is that I'm not doing anything different(ly?) this year than any prior year. Maybe it was just that I happened to use my bike to get around that day, so heard more birds; and that a fifth year in the field here has just added to my own knowledge base enough that I reached a new point. I'm grateful that Diony was there to confirm what I think I was hearing. There are many things in nature that one learns to wonder about. The more you learn, the more you realize how much more there is to learn. As many photos as I do take, on various cameras and now on my smartphone, so much of the experience of being outdoors is a flash-in-the-pan observation that can't be recorded or shared, just experienced.

Townsend's warblers will soon migrate northward to Oregon and Alaska to find mates and raise the next generation. Then, next fall, again they will return to two specific regions -- a thin strip of Pacific coast from Oregon south to Baja California, and another, distinct region ranging from southeast Arizona through central Mexico and into Central America.

I don't have a powerful enough lens for a great photo of a Townsend's warbler to share. (See the link above.) Perhaps it's time I got one. But, here's a picture I took of a small group of birders at Battery East in the Presidio, on participants in my monthly bird walk there. We were sort of hamming it up, staring into the thick fog. It had been one of those mornings that began miserable and became glorious as the sun "burned off" the fog.

Presidio Park Stewards birding the bluffs, October 2011.

Happy Presidents' Day!

Happy Presidents' Day ! (er, Washington's Birthday. Why was Lincoln's name/birthday removed, anyway?)
 
Enjoy a photo of an Obama shotglass!

Lala's Obama Shotglass, Charlottesville, 2013.

Beardog and Mt. Tam, Summer 2013.

I just don't have enough pictures of Bear on the blog, so he's making a cameo. He looks fairly presidential, right? So does Mount Tam in the back. I learned this week that Tamalpais is a word from the local Native Americans, the Ohlone, who gave it the name. Tamal means "west" or "coastal" and pais means "mountain," or "peak". It, along with Mt. Diablo, are the two eyes of the turtle; the rest of the turtle lies east of the mountain. Current political boundaries make the turtle's other features somewhat unclear to define.

At any rate, the picture of Bear with Mt. Tam is appropriate, since Bear happily spent most of this holiday with his loving mama. For him there could be no better way to spend any day.

Source: Wikipedia.

American Eateries: Waffle House

Waffle House on Yale Blvd.,  Albuquerque, 2013.

Here's a little bit of Americana. If my diner geography is accurate, Waffle House is found in the South, and Denny's is its Northern answer. And Village Inn seems to be in the West. They are not affiliated, as far as I know, but at any of these you can probably order American food like chicken-fried steak and drink bottomless cups of weak coffee.

I missed taking the photo of its famous sign with Scrabble-like letters spelling its name. Highway drivers in the Southern U.S. know to look for those glowing yellow letters. 

Here's the menu for your perusal. You've got Alice's Iced Tea, Bert's Best Bowl of Chili, and Walt's Soup to choose from. Save room for Bert's Chili Sausage Gravy (Bert was creative) and Papa Joe's Pork Chops! Some of the typos are amusing... like in the Ligher Choices section. See if you can find it. 

Let's go to Waffle House! 

---

Photographer's note: this was shot with 100 speed film that was inadvertently set to ASA 800, then "pushed" in the developing process to allow enough light to hit the negative. Hence the tonal quality. I kind of like it.

Abandoned Used Car Lot, Albuquerque

I'm interested to see places where nature has begun to return to human-altered landscapes. I've blogged about it before, and probably will again -- it was a recurring theme in a family trip to Europe two summers ago, but I have yet to publish any of those photos here...for now. Anyhow, here is a glimpse into wild taking over a sliver of Albuquerque. Catey and I stumbled upon this old used car lot when we were giving ourselves a self-guided tour of the city over Thanksgiving. 

Nature returning, Albuquerque, November 2013.

We thought it was pretty cool. We were taken by the look of the asphalt fractured by strands of fine grass. We don't know what species it is, but we assume it's a non-native. I'm not sure why this matters, but given the nature of our work, it permeates most of our thoughts about plants and the human landscape. Somehow, I do like the idea that these grasses are native. I like the idea that they once grew in this very spot.

Broken skateboard in old used car lot, Albuquerque, November 2013.

Whatever grass it is, one has to wonder how it colonized. How do weeds do this? How do they get everywhere? Here, in Albuquerque, it's not hard to imagine that wind brought this seed here. Wind brought seed here to arrive the very day that a flaw first appeared in this parking lot. It may have blown from a sidewalk three feet away. It may have blown from the foothills of Sandia Mountain, 10 miles away.

Medical Arts Ave NE & Lomas Blvd NE, 1991-2012. Google Earth Imagery.