Natural City

Lost and found. 

Conformity.

Nature's spotlight.

Camelot Where You Are, #16

Chieftess didn't say much about her entry when she sent it in. But I know a few things about it because she posted it along with another photo on her blog, Mammoth Lakes Daily Photo, asking readers to help choose her entry by voting.

"...being in the mountains," says Chieftess, "there's not much in the way of castles, or knights, or shields, or really much of anything that could 

depict Camelot...But w-a-i-t!!! We've got majestic mountains!!!"

They sure do. Thank you, Chieftess.

******************

It's easy to enter the Camelot Where You Are photo contest, and anyone can do it. Entry details are here.

Send in a picture of your interpretation of Camelot where you are. It can be anything--a building, a toy, a work of nature--whatever your imagination tells you.

Then be sure to vote over the weekend for your favorite of this week's entries. Each weekly winner receives a free copy of Camelot & Vine upon publication this month. Publication day, whatever day it turns out to be, will be the final day for entries.

Primavera

 It's spring. Around here, that means Primavera.

You're invited!

I'm told this pretty poster is untweetable. How's this?

Saturday, March 19th, 11am-? Farnsworth Park, Altadena
Bloggers, families, friends & groupies welcome!
bring a dish, utensils or paper goods to share
info: altadenablog@gmail.com
or call 626-791-5327

I imagine that's more than 140 characters. I'll let you pick what to abbreviate. We'll have plenty of characters at the picnic, no abbreviations necessary.

Please spread the word (there's a little button below). I hope to see you there.

The Darling Buds of January

With apologies to William Shakespeare:

Shall I compare this to a summer's day?
It is more comfy and more temperate:
Hot sun doth bake the darling buds of May,
And summer's heat hath all too long a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every day the heat doth make us pine,
When budgeting for air conditioning's slim:
But our delightful winter shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that green it hast,
Nor shall dearth brag we wand'rest in its shade,
Nor is infernal sun our doomed forecast.
   So long as I have camera and compute,
   So long lives this, I hope it's not too cute.

Release

Just a cloud. Just a treetop. Just a gray day. Just some birds.

Misdemeanor

Woodpecker holes
a necklace of damage

orderly as beads.

Though they look like a row of bullet holes shot across a wall by one of Capone's gangsters, they're more decorative than detrimental. The tree doesn't notice. I almost didn't notice, either. That's how they get away with it.

We have at least five woodpecker gangs in southern California: the Downy Woodpeckers, Nuttall’s Woodpeckers, the Northern Flickers, the Acorn Woodpeckers and the Red-breasted Sapsuckers.

I couldn't pick this job's culprit out of a lineup but I'm going to take a chance and lay my money on the Acorn Woodpecker, a southern California native. I've seen those guys around and I wouldn't put it past 'em. They know where all the bugs are and this is their turf.

I stay out of their way. You've gotta be a tough little guy to make so many perfect little holes with your face.

Solar Salad

When I moved here from Illinois I thought of living in southern California as a vacation on another planet, especially when it came to plant life. Sometimes I still do. Click on this picture to enlarge it. These are bean pods.

The brownish stream on the lower right of this photo is bean pods. The branches above the stream show where the pods came from.

What kind of tree drops bean pods in purple, orange, yellow and green? Surely something not from our solar system.

This photo was taken awfully close to JPL. Maybe I shouldn't be wandering around over there.

Paper Trees

I've heard of paper being made from trees. These trees turn things around; they look like they're made of paper. The bark peels off them in great sheets, each tree is like a writing tablet.

What would I use to write with on such paper? Perhaps a bird would deign to perch on my finger and allow me to use its talon to scratch out a poem. A mockingbird if I'm feeling snarky. A crow if my mood is mean.

This is a great fantasy until I start thinking about how to make copies.

Sunset Over Mud Flats

Nature has made changes in the landscape. Who am I to argue? Like I have a say in the matter anyway.

Optimistic

According to Google (and where else would I get my weather information?) it got to as low as 37 degrees in Pasadena sometime in the last 24 hours. I bundle up so much you'd never know I lived in northern Illinois for much of my life. The only person in our family who dislikes the cold more than I do is the dog, and he's a soCal native.

It rained quite a bit yesterday. Southern California's in its third year of drought and we do need rain, just--not all at once. Autumn's Station Fire left very little vegetation in the mountains above town. Instead we've got thousands of acres of ash. Mix that up with a few days' worth of downpour and you get mudslides.

We're used to "fire season." We're used to ash. We're even used to mudslides. But the Station Fire was the biggest in the recorded history of the Angeles National Forest, and this year the ash could come charging down the mountains in torrents of mud the likes of which haven't been seen in these parts before.

Could. Not necessarily will.

It's supposed to be sunny today. We'll have more rain later in the week. But I'm optimistic, which is easy for me to say because I live in a part of town that's not in any danger (fingers crossed). The most I have to worry about is that the dog refuses to go outside without an umbrella and since he lacks opposable thumbs (to cross his fingers or carry his umbrella), guess who gets to bundle up in all her winter finery and accompany him.

Altadenablog is always a good place to check for updates on severe road and weather conditions in the mountains.

Saturday Sfumato

Sometimes it happens here in the late day, if conditions are right - a bit of natural sfumato. I blogged about it last May, when smoke still hung in the sky from the Sierra Madre fire.

Our sky seemed clear enough yesterday, though I woke up to fog in the early morning. This photo was taken as the sun began to set. Perhaps what I captured was late day moisture caught in the lateral rays. What I love is the gradations of sharpness, the muted colors. (You've got to enlarge this one.) I've pointed my camera at this same field before and gotten purples and pinks.

Somewhere in this picture are coyotes, rabbits, snakes, bats, bugs, squirrels and a couple of bobcats. It is very tough getting them to pose like this.

Fire in the Sky

With three wildfires burning in the vicinity, our air has had an odd feel to it lately. On the worst days we could smell it. Mostly though, the air just feels close and hot. Not as close and hot as it feels to the firefighters. By the way, they have all the local fires contained now, and the cause found for at least one.

We can't complain here in Pasadena - I mean, the fire's not burning here. We've been warned, though. Fire season has only begun, so people are clearing dry brush and being careful. It's when the Santa Ana winds kick up that folks have to be the most vigilant.

In my part of town we have plenty of asphalt, and I tend to think that's a decent firebreak. But we should probably clean our gutters just in case.

In San Marino the other night, particles in the sky produced a stunning sunset.

The Golden State

I'm not a participant in Skywatch Friday but every so often I get a good sky shot. This was taken looking west (duh) over La Canada Flintridge toward the Glendale hills.

Glendale doesn't border on Pasadena; we've got Eagle Rock between us. (Eagle Rock's officially part of Los Angeles, but really it's its own community.) La Canada Flintridge borders Pasadena on its east side, to our northwest.

I've set rules for myself. I post photos here taken only in Pasadena or its bordering communities (unless someone else is doing the City Daily Photo blog for that community). So for example, if I wanted to post a photo I'd taken in Glendale, I'd put it on Overdog. I took a photo in Hollywood that I like, so I posted it there. (Like Eagle Rock, Hollywood's officially part of Los Angeles, but unlike Eagle Rock, it seems fitting.)

I haven't taken any photos in La Canada Flintridge. A project to put on my list.

Seeing vs. Believing

It's been a while since I've posted a shot of palm trees and sky. And telephone wires.

Before I looked at the photo I thought I had taken a picture of palm trees and sky in the shape of a V.

(Shouldn't we have found an alternative to wires by now? This is the 21st century. Wires seem so 19th century to me, tracing across the landscape like shoelaces, holding the world together. But that's beside the point.)

I've talked to other photographers about this; we think we see a shot. We point the camera, we even shoot. When we view the shot later, it's not what we had thought it was.

I didn't notice the wires before because they're so much a part of our landscape as to have become invisible. Until I looked at the photos. Wires everywhere.

And my V's not perfect, there's a gap in the left side.

It brings to mind a quote by the great photographer Dorothea Lange: "The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." This is why you see photographers walking around making the little box with their hands and looking through it.

Obviously I'm still learning how to see without the camera. I'm also walking around all dreamy-eyed, because everything looks like a photo to me now. Since I've been taking pictures, I want to capture it all. But there's no urgency. There are plenty of telephone wires to photograph.

Passionflower

You might recognize this, but when I saw it I stopped in my tracks like Boz does when there's something he must smell.

When I got home I searched for it on the web. It's Passiflora incarnata, otherwise known as Purple passionflower. It's easy to see why it got its name; it's beautiful enough to fall in love with.

This plant was growing around the base of a palm tree on a residential street. I want some in my yard. A site called Dave's Garden says Purple passionflower is "wild, invasive and virtually indestructible." That would be fine, the yard needs some work.

Wikipedia says the plant is used to treat anxiety and sleeplessness. I'm off to buy some today. Yesterday I invited a few friends to join me for tea at a place we hadn't tried, and...well read about it at Miss Havisham's place if you can bear it.

Treats

Tempting, aren't they?

But I wouldn't dare.

These berries strike me as just the thing a wicked witch would use to lure Hansel and Gretel down the path and deeper into the woods. "Oooh," the witch would say, "delicious, aren't they? So sweet and jooooseeee." And poor Gretel would stuff her cheeks. She wouldn't know they were poison berries. By the time she was dizzy and sick to her stomach it would be too late, she'd be in the witch's cabin, hidden away on a hillock in the Arroyo Seco—I mean the woods—where most people don't even know there's a cabin at all.

Hansel had better enlist all his handsome prince friends to help him find her, or he's going to have to walk the dog by himself from now on.

Jupiter Moon

Thanks to JPL and Caltech, Pasadena's full of rocket scientists. There's one living across the street from me, a handsome guy who rides his bike to work and has better things to do than answer my questions about the sky. So when I want to know what's going on up there I check Stardate.

You'll have to click on this photo to enlarge it and see the giant star near the moon. It's been out for a while now. I figured it probably wasn't a star. Sure enough, it's Jupiter. Stardate says, "Even through the lunar glare, binoculars should reveal Europa and Jupiter's three other big moons. They look like tiny stars lined up quite close to the planet -- worlds with their own intriguing stories."

I don't have binoculars, but maybe you do. Get them ready. Jupiter will be out again tonight over your rooftop and mine.

Sunbaked Hero

I admit this picture doesn't look like much until you click to enlarge it. I hadn't planned to post it at all, but after reading yesterday's comments I decided to go ahead. I mentioned the man who dug stairs into the path above Las Flores Canyon. Altadenahiker said, "I've been told the stairs were originally dug by the fire fighters several years ago. But my hat is off to the gentleman who is doing this renovation in the heat of summer. Wonder who he is."

I've often seen L.A. County park rangers on the trails with their maintenance equipment. The area trails I know are well-maintained; it must be a constant project to keep them clean and passable for hikers. Most regular hikers are respectful, but I take a small bag when I hike so I can pick up what trash I see. It's worst after a weekend.

The Sam Merrill Trail, which I was hiking when I took this shot, is across the canyon from the stairs in question. That day, the shoveling man and I were the only ones crazy enough to be out in the infernal heat. I could hear the dig and scrape of his shovel. He was working his way uphill.

Who is he? No park ranger uniform. Just a dark T-shirt. No hat. I hope he was wearing sunscreen.

Summer Colors

These would be fall colors in the Midwest, where I grew up. Here, as seen from the Sam Merrill Trail, browns and golds are summer colors. Bits of gray, green and orange enhance the palette of the scrub's subtle beauty. It's not what I'd call a riot of color but it's hugely varied. Along the many nature trails here you'll also find wildflowers any time of year: red, yellow, even bright purple.

In the background of the photo a path leads uphill through the area that burned almost a year ago. I don't know if the path is new or if it was always there and was revealed by the burn. Lately a man has been out there shoveling in the hot sun, making the path into a stairway. I tried to get a picture but he was far away, and it was crazy enough for me to be there. The scrub is beautiful but not as tall as trees, and it doesn't provide much shade.

Escapee

On our neighborhood walks, Boz and I often pass by the North Pasadena Church of Christ, and I admire this tree on the church property. Long ago someone built a wall around it, but a tree can't be bound by such insignificance. I'm pleased no one has attempted to imprison it in again now that it has busted free. Stone walls do not a prison make.

While I was taking this photo I heard the choir practicing. They sounded good. Richard Lovelace might have enjoyed the music.