While picking peas, I’ve been subject to vocal commentary by various avians.
Anna’s Hummingbird: Scritchy scritchy complain scritchy… BzzzzzzPINGk!
Black Phoebe: Pfee pfee. (Wag tail.) Pfee.
Western Scrub-jay: (Insert loud, rasping squawk of choice.)
…And: Chichichi chichi chichi hyeenhyeenh! Hyeenh hyeenh! (Repeat.) Chestnut-backed Chickadees have become our neighbors.
Chestnut-backed chickadee during a bath: “Hey! I haff not yet coiffed my [...]
Category Archives: Places
Chickadees in the garden
Sunday, 29 April 2007
Alternative Press Expo 2007
Sunday, 22 April 2007
I hopped onto the train, braved the spring training crowds, and met up with Kathleen, Zed, and K’s friends Scott and Liz at the Alternative Press Expo (APE) this year.
An initial reconnaisance yielded a huge stack of business cards and brochures. I ended up purchasing from less than a quarter of those creators. While I [...]
Fresh pea soup with leeks & mint
Tuesday, 17 April 2007
It’s now the peak of the pea season in our backyard. For me it’s the sweet announcement that Spring has arrived.
Peapod from Climbing Sugar Snap.
I have bad memories of split-pea soup from childhood. Pasty, with chunks of nasty ham. Blech. But soup made from fresh peas? That is a completely different creature.
Apricot fruitlets sighted
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
Cute apricot fruitlets have been sighted, about three weeks after the peak of blossoming. The additional foliage has caused an increase in approval ratings from neighborhood birds, including the resident Chestnut-backed Chickadees and Scrub-jays.
There are a few more apricot images in the plant album.
Apricot blossoms!
Monday, 12 March 2007
One of the biggest attractions of our garden is the old apricot tree in the backyard. Our neighborhood used to be part of one the (formerly) many apricot orchards in the Santa Clara Valley. This thirty-plus (forty-plus?) year old tree is one the few sad, beautiful reminders of that era.
WonderCon 2007
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
It has been five years since I last attended a comic book convention. Last Sunday I broke that spell of inactivity, and attended WonderCon in San Francisco with Kathleen.
Early-ish travel photos
Saturday, 24 February 2007
I had uploaded these travel pictures some time ago, but only now remembered to “announce” them.
The trip to the Philippines in early 1997 marked my first overseas venture. I used my then-falling apart, now-defunct Ricoh SLR camera. I originally digitized the pictures with a flatbed scanner (thanks, Jed!), but I’d like to redo it sometime, [...]
Photos of the garden pond
Wednesday, 17 January 2007
Finally uploaded photographs documenting the pond Simon installed in the backyard. The process started in early 2003, and took well over a year for plants to become established. We need to replace some of the plants (the Japanese maple couldn’t tolerate the heat), but we now have lovely gold fines gravel for the bench area [...]
Macworld Expo 2007 coming soon
Wednesday, 3 January 2007
The annual MacWorld Expo San Francisco will take place next week. Unfortunately, I think my Perusal-Research List is pretty much the same as last year’s. It’s unfortunate because I have yet to find these items:
Car stereo integration for the iPod at a reasonable cost. I’ve never liked FM transmitters, and the tape player is broken. [...]
