Fine, three articles in a row on garden plants. And over a month since my last post — I’ve been busy with starting the multifarious, multistep process of starting our big remodeling project, a.k.a., the Replacement of the Ugly Backroom and Kitchen et al. So it goes.
Nevertheless, the spring wildflowers are coming to an end [...]
Category Archives: Dilettantism
Farewell to Spring
Friday, 29 May 2009
More wildflowers in the yard
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
I continue to be amazed by the wildflowers in our garden. I had low hopes, since the last time we tried wildflower mixes — which was, oh, six to eight years ago in the front yard and parking strip — all we got were Calpops. Those are nice of course, but they’re rather short-lived, and [...]
March showers bring April flowers
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Some say it’s April showers that get the flowers going, but here in sunny, rainfall-challenged California, things pop out about a month (or more) earlier. Even though March had its typical paucity of precipitation, the single hailstorm — complete with rain and wind — had occurred right at the peak of apricot blossoms. (Indeed, I [...]
Young Scrub Jays in the garden
Sunday, 31 August 2008
We have a scrawny fig tree that bears fruit annually, but we rarely get more than a taste. I’ve often suspected birds as the culprits.
WENK. Wenk wenk wenk!
Now I have proof: young Western Scrub Jay bossing over backyard fig tree! Okay, only indirect proof, since none of the pictures actually showed the bird’s beak snorfing [...]
Encyclopedia of Life: Initial launch
Saturday, 5 April 2008
Last year I had eagerly anticipated the arrival of the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL). Entries on individual species became viewable on 28 February, a few months earlier than the projected mid-2008 deadline. Coolness!
Currently they have twenty-four exemplar species pages, tens of thousands of authenticated (but not detailed) species pages, and about a million other species [...]
Hot bird action
Friday, 28 March 2008
Unfortunately, the title of this entry is quite literal: Last week a hawk died in our neighborhood. As the poor thing expired, it managed to take out a transformer and blow a power line —rendering our block powerless until dinnertime. It had (the remains of) a squirrel, so one theory was that as the squirrel [...]
Bathroom remodel from… a couple years ago
Thursday, 6 March 2008
For years we lived with a bathroom that I called the Pink Horror. No ventilation (other than the window and door), a rotten (literally) paint job done by the house seller, and pink tiles. I hate the color pink, and Pepto-Bismo Pink just ain’t gonna be an exception.
Before bathroom remodel.
Neighborhood bird watching list
Monday, 3 March 2008
I know I’ll continue my habit of writing lists on bits of paper, but I thought it’d be useful to maintain an online list of the birds I’ve seen in our neighborhood. I’ve limited this to visitors to our yards and the nearby park.
“Birders, are ye?” Well, I prefer the term bird watching, mainly because [...]
Worst writing boo-boo’s boobooes typos
Monday, 25 February 2008
Eegad, once again I sent off an email with a word missing, making my message sound ambiguous. As well as just plain sloppy. The compulsive ferret in my brain pushes me to send yet another email with the corrections. And so it goes, even with published webpages such as blog posts.
Lorelle’s encouraging Blogging Challenge article [...]
Birds in Winter (and a squirrel)
Tuesday, 19 February 2008
In autumn and winter the birds arrive from the north to keep us company. This typically means a lot of White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows around the yard, but my flagship migrator is the Yellow-rumped Warbler. Or, as Simon and I call them, Yellow-butts. For their 2007 arrival, I first noticed them on the (easily remembered) [...]
