16 August 2014 - Urban beastiary

I have been in San Francisco with my sister for a couple of weeks. I was able to take quite a few long walks through the city as well as along the waterfront.

On one of my walks I began to notice all the ornamental animals on the older buildings. Because I am never without a camera, I started taking pictures of every one I saw.  The funny part is that my sister is an artist who specializes in one-of-a-kind handmade books. When I was telling her about the Urban Beastiary, she laughed and showed me all the pictures she had taken in the hopes of creating an Urban Zoo book.  Is it shared genes? Or just that we both notice the same kind of things? 

Get ready for way too many pictures. I have organized them into groups. The first group is all lions since they seem to be the dominant animal in the urban forest. Lions appear on buildings more than any other animal. 

Lions will be  followed by other mammals, then birds (lots of eagles), and finally my favorite, gargoyles! and sea life.

Lions

You need to remember that on buildings, these are very high up, which makes it hard to get pictures. In addition, they tend to run along the top of the building anywhere from 3 to 10 feet apart.

 I wish I could get a run of them on a building , but by the time I get one of these in focus, there is no way to get any of the others in the line. 

It is particularly nice when you get several features on a single building such as an upper row of eagles over the lions. 

 

Notice the red eyes!

 

Other conventions that showed up over and over were lions with swag and lions with rings in their mouths. 

That is a fairly good sample of lions. I have many more but since there are several categories to go, I'll stop with these. 

Mammals other than lions. This was a surprising set. You would expect bears, being the California state animal and all, but some of the others?  Check these out! 

 

 

 

I think I'll stop here for now. There will be a Part 2.

20 July 2014 - And so it begins

Two weeks ago I had an email from my brother, quick and to the point,  "Look out, the zucchini are blooming."

The following week he showed up with some baby zukes (four to six inches long) from his elderly neighbor. I had them for breakfast. Eggs and zucchini are a sublime combination. 

The next week he showed up with zucchini from his own garden. All three of these would not make up one of the zucchini he brought. Good thing I actually like zucchini. 

19 July 2014 - Back away from the window

I really need someone here to tell me , "Lauri, just step away from the window."  I have so much I want to do, not to mention need to do, and what am I doing?  Sitting on the kitchen counter with my nose pressed to the window. 

 I can't help it. Funny things are happening out there. I now have two sets of fledgling blue jays. Seven of them! And they are so darned silly. They are learning how to land on the suet feeder and eat. It takes a while before they master landing on something that swings madly underneath them. 

I was very taken with the solution this young jay found by hanging upside down with his legs fully extended. 

Definitely something I have not seen before. And, you have to admit, it is quite ingenious. 

It makes it very hard to step away from the windows when the circus is just outside. 

15 July 2013 - Weeding: Mindless or Zen?

I am a gardener. And not just a gardener, but an organic gardener. That means no insecticides, no pesticides, no weed killers. Although I must admit to using RoundUp this year to help me get rid of a pernicious patch of myrtle, but that is not the norm. 

I am also the gardener.  My brother shows up with his chain saw when needed. Where is all this going? It means I dig up weeds by hand. I have a very long relationship with digging weeds, starting as a young child at my mother's knee digging dandelions. I hated it. Hot, unsatisfying work. 

This week it dawned on me. Just what is gardening? Yes, it is growing things, but whether flowers or vegetables, they need maintenance. And part, okay, the biggest part, of that is weeding. It is just part of the process. It was a surprise to discover that spending this much time on my knees with an often single-minded intensity on weeding is not the chore it used to be.  One morning I started before 7 am and got several hours of weeding in before the sun started to bake the soil. I was in the zone. I had reached the zen of weeding. Gather, dig, twist. That was all there was.

Currently I am spending a couple hours each day with my digger and trusty trug pulling weeds out of the lawns. The biggest problem is an infestation of Black Medic, a tiny leaved weed with a single taproot and spreading limbs that grow side ways through the lawn. It is not only blooming but many of them have the clusters of black seeds ready to pop and spread into the surrounding area. In addition there is bindweed and common mallow both with the dreaded taproots. When my sibs and I were little we called mallow the cheese plant because the seed vessel was round and flat and we ate them, pretending they were little cheeses. 

But I digress. I gave myself a goal of a trug full of weeds a day. It is hard to stop at one trug when you are on a roll. Because of the relentless sun and heat factor I have been pulling an umbrella on a stand behind me so I can work in the shade. It really makes a difference. 


What else makes a difference? Last year I overheard my neighbor talking to her children. "C'mon kids, the weeds are our friends today."  It had rained the previous day and the soil was damp enough to let weeds slide up out of the ground. While it made me laugh with appreciation at the time, I too, prefer to weed after the rain, or after sprinkling the lawn.  It is a wonderful way to connect with your garden. You hear the birds singing overhead, the zzzzip of the hummingbirds. If you are near something blooming you can hear the bees working. Yesterday I heard crickets for the first time this season.

A friend of mine who is going through a stressful time, recently told me she spent two hours in her garden mindlessly pulling weeds.  It was the mindlessly word that got me.  I was feeling as though I had reached a zen state while weeding.  Now I'm thinking that mindless weeding is the same as a zen state. 

In both instances you let everything go, it is a great way to detox from situations, let the brain quiet down and clear the mind. The anxieties fade into the background and lets the subconscious deal. 
Maybe that isn't so mindless after all.

14 July 2014 - What's blooming now

This last week has been hot. Highs from 97 to 99. Today we are expecting 102.  The heat is hard on the flowers, they fade very quickly.  But, there are still some stubborn bloomers that make my yard a little more colorful. Hot temps, and mostly hot colors.