Up at 2:30 a.m. thanks to a power outage (that LADWP now says will continue to 12:30 p.m.), I paid a well-timed visit into the rainy backyard this morning, which offered me a chance to observe a neighborhood skunk who had started to come through our backyard but then reversed course and found an alternate …
With my morning wide open yesterday I found a bike rental place near the hotel and took a self-powered 3-hour cruise of discovery around lovely San Antonio. I visited the San Fernando Cathedral, the amazing King William Historic Residential District, the remarkable Mission Concepcion, a nice stretch of the city’s famed River Walk, and more …
Off the cap of my cranium I can’t remember how long ago exactly  it was that I amended a patch of soil in the backyard and we planted several pumpkin plants… I think it was near the middle/end of August. We knew we’d gotten a late start if we were thinking about harvesting a would-be …
This incessantly slimy wet weather Los Angeles has been suffering with these last few days finally got me nostalgic enough for summer this weekend to battle my balky computer until I finally was able to get the above timelapse uploaded to YouTube. This is the last of four timelapse sequences recorded continuously between June 7 …
Last week while pedaling on the LA River Bikeway a bird in the water caught my eye that I stopped and snapped (click the image for the bigger picture): Though my first thought was “black-crowned night heron,” it was substantially larger than any I’d seen, plus it didn’t have the typical starkly contrasting plummage much …
Today’s snapshot update on our thriving backyard pumpkin patch comes with a bonus: it is pumpkinless no more: It’s been flowering very well, but so far the all-important pollination thing hadn’t happened. Until now! Hiding under the umbrella of leaves up against the fence, will you look at that!? Sure, it’s not even the size …
The Natural History Museum’s Spider Pavilion doesn’t open up for a few more days  so in the meantime if you’re into arachnids like I am why wait? Just come on over to our house and see this magnificent monster who’s set up housekeeping over the north side walkway. It was a few days ago when …