A Wild Night For Wildlife

As if mother nature took our order and delivered, I was talking with Susan earlier tonight about how we’ve seen our share of opossums and skunks and coyotes around the house but hadn’t ever had raccoons on the premises and all of a sudden in the middle of the hilarious The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie …

Avocado Avocation

It was Jo Gillis and the miracle of her “Charlie Brown” peach tree that got things started. Shortly after reading that post near the end of July I plopped into pots the pits of a pair of peaches (say that three-times fast) to see if they might grow, but so far nothing yet. Jo later …

Hide & Go Seek

As a layperson I’d just call it camouflage, but from my years as both an employee and docent at the Los Angeles Zoo I had the more scientific term drummed into my head — cryptic coloration — which is just a fancy bio way of saying a creature’s colors and/or patterns allow it to blend …

Timelapsification

Oh, it’s on! I got home around 6 p.m. to find one of the San Pedro cactus night-blooming blossoms just itchin’ to open up and I rushrushrushed to get everything set up to capture it in all its glory, which my blogbud Julia asked in the comments of my first attempt if I’d actually taken …

Foreign The Flora

File this under Never Ceast To Amaze. Last year it was morel mushrooms that sprang up outta nowhere in the backyard. This year in a decidedly barren patch along the northside of the house this pair of two-foot-tall bulb-tipped stalks climb vertical out of the dirt with no complementary greenery and proceed to go off …