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The jasmine is blooming profusely. It grows over our front fence near the gate to the backyard. The flowers are very fragrant. The plant is native to East…
The brugmansia has grown up quite tall, struggling to reach the light amid the surrounding trees. The ladder, placed there for pruning, gives a sense of scale. The…
The crabapple is one of my favorite small trees, offering interest year round. But never moreso than in the early spring when it produces beautiful blossoms like these….
We inherited the lemon tree from a previous resident. We’ve been here for decades and have never bought a lemon since moving in.
Here in the SF Bay area, our seasons occur on the cross-quarters. The equinox is more mid-spring than the beginning of spring. Our spring starts with the cross-quarter: Candlemas,…
I like the fall color of the persimmon. I left several persimmons on the round table under the umbrella to the right of the tree. I came home…
The Desert Garden at the Huntington Gardens is my favorite desert garden anywhere. I’ll do a fuller post on this another time.
Spring has come late for us in the Bay Area this year. Ordinarily our spring is around Groundhog’s Day. Now, after an extremely dry January and February, with…
It feels like it’s taken forever, but the new Bay Bridge is finally entering its final months of construction, if reports can believed. To honor the old…
This handsome fellow planted himself in one of our walkways. But what is it? My guess is it’s some kind of verbascum.
Here’s a glimpse of the swimming pool that became a garden, now in its fourth year -hard to believe it’s been that many already.
Carol is thinking it might be too early this year to start our tomatoes. It’s been cold and rainy for many days, and there is no break in…
I visited Muir Woods yesterday (in the company of a couple of beautiful women) via the main entrance and found it quite crowded — the only parking was a good ways down the road from the auxiliary lot. That’s one of the reasons we normally enter from the Pantoll or Bootjack trails. But the main redwood grove by the entrance really is quite spectacular, and I took a few pictures..
I’ve been taking pictures in Muir Woods for decades, but I feel it’s a difficult subject: it’s both very low (and quite green) light and also — perversely enough from the photographer’s standpoint — high contrast. Probably the best as a general rule would be a low ASA setting, a small aperture, and a very long exposure using a tripod. I didn’t have that luxury however, as I was just shooting with my trusty Canon A630. Still, these low-res samples might capture something of the feel of the day. (Expand to full screen or click through to the Flickr page for better views.)
It would be a good thing. Urban Forest Map is trying to make a log of all of the trees in San Francisco. The group is made up…
Took advantage of the nice weekend weather and worked in the garden. This year our problem is that everything’s filling all the spaces and getting crowded. We’re going to have to be fairly ruthless.
Took some photos and posted them to flickr. Click the image or follow this link to my flickr garden set.
Most people would probably take BART and the Oakland International Airport connector shuttle. (The trip takes about 45 minutes and costs around $10.) But Delta Airlines offers a…
If we are so concerning about sparing the air, why don’t we hold Chevron and the Port of Oakland to a higher standard?
By David Enos
I am hereby calling for a criminal investigation of CalTrans and the Bay Bridge repair contractor, C.C. Myers Inc. It’s a miracle the failure of the bridge repair…
I’m back from vacation, just in time to find that governor Arnold has sent a not very subtle message to the city by the bay, and the California…
Today’s image of shafts of sunlight cutting through tall redwoods along a Muir Woods hiking trail comes from vgm8383’s photostream. This is an HDR (high dynamic range) photo — a technique that combines multiple exposures to give a greater range of tonal detail. It worked pretty well in this instance because Muir Woods is surprisingly dark (test it with a light meter if you don’t believe me), and the light is very green.
This image of the presidio in 1887 comes from the public library’s historical photographs collection. Of interest are the small trees (today a large grove or forest) that…
We’ve all read the stories about the University of California’s budget problems. High adminstrator salaries. Tightening the screws on the grunt laborers who do all the actual work….