Category Archives: Around home

Two questions and a macro lens

Americana, Around home, Photography

Last summer, Michele bought a seedling at the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society show. She bought it because it was fuzzy and the deer – seen here looking for something tasty after chomping down on an Acacia sprout –

don’t normally eat fuzzy plants so it seemed like a good choice for the backyard.

Then, a week or so ago, it bloomed at the very tip, right where the new leaves are. I have no idea what the plant is and I am pretty good at identifying plants partially because I am a lumper and not a splitter.  A lumper says that an onion is a Lily and leaves it at that, a splitter wants to know exactly what kind of onion it is. With cacti, the lumper sees the fairly common tree cactus and sees a Opuntia of some kind, or – maybe – a Opuntia brasiliensis; a splitter sees a Brisiliopuntia brasiliensis. Being a lumper is much easier.

After photographing the plant, I went for walk around the neighborhood and saw a baseball laying by the side of the trail where there are no houses. I am tickled by the fact that the ball is OFFICIAL LEAGUE which – let’s face it – is never Official League. Actually, we used to use Official League as a joke, sort of like Industrial Strength or the amp goes to 11. Also, as you can see, the ball is made in China.

Now, for the two questions: what IS that plant? and, are real major league baseballs made in China? or are they still made in the good ol’ USA because baseball is our national pastime, after all?

Cultivars

Around home, Photography

warm days early nights
Amaryllis belladonna
bright in fading light

It is the end of summer and the most noticeable flowers, by far, are the naked ladies, Amaryllis belladonna. When I first got interested in plants, my plants of choice were cactus. At that time, in San Jose – at least – people held species in much higher regard than hybrids or, more formally, Cultivars. The large hybrids flowers – in Rhododendrons for example – were often distainly referred to as blopo flowers. The small, often inconsequential flowers of the true species were considered purer.

I still pretty much feel that way, but Michele has buying cultivars of A. belladonna for a while now and I really like them. Maybe because the  species flower is pretty much a blopo to start with, I find the variety of the cultivars beguiling. Here are a couple from our backyard, starting with the outrageously pink true species – I think – and going on to a couple of cultivars.

 

Precious Mae at one year

Around home, Photography

Precious Mae, shown here keeping an eye on the backyard, has been with us for one year today. She has become part of our family and – I think – we are part of her – as Michele put it – social circle. She is watching the baby deer and her – the baby deer’s – mommy watch me as I try to photo all of them. I can walk out on the back deck and the deer pretty much ignore me so it is hard to get a picture of them looking at me. The top picture is of the mother ignoring me just before she wandered off, the second picture is of the fawn watching the mother and…

 

the third picture is the fawn following her mother back into the woods. The fawn has just about lost all of her spots.

Precious Mae, in the meanwhile goes into stalk mode and then, wistfully watches the deer disappear into the woods.

 

 

 

 

Friday night

Around home, Photography, Uncategorized

At the end of the day, last night – Friday – I had just poured myself a bourbon to mark the end of the week and was getting ready to go outside and celebrate the warm evening air – finally – when Michele said There is the baby deer. Our resident deer had two babies this spring and then one disappeared and the remaining one had a goiter on her – I’m going to go with “her” until I find out otherwise – neck. But, now, in the gloaming light, she seems to have lost the goiter. Good.

I snuck back in, got my camera, and threw the tele on. I got a couple of shots – the metadata says it was 7:53 – and the the baby and mother took off in different direction. The first time I saw a mommy and baby deer take off in different directions, I was worried that the baby would be abandoned but now I am convinced it is a survival strategy. Sitting there is the warm air, I watched four Steller’s Jays – my favorite corvids – take off from the birdbath and fly to the buckeye by the house.

Then the baby deer came back – 8:09 according to the camera – the light faded past the redwoods, and Precious Mae came out to join me. In the dark, a few birds chirped, and down the hill at the Family Farm someone was playing jazz. Life is good and , for a few minutes, all is right with the world.

A modern dinner plus some fallout

Around home, Food and Drink, Uncategorized

Our friends Peter Kuhlman and Ophelia Ramirez dropped by to hang out outside for a drink or two and for Peter’s fourth birthday dinner last Sunday evening. They didn’t actually drop by because they now live in Boise and dropping by is hard. We met Ophelia and Peter at Temenos in the early 90s but first knew we were kindred spirits when we bumped into them standing in line for a revival showing of The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah’s bloody, high-body-count eulogy to the mythologized Old West to quote IMDb. We do miss them.

Anyway, after dinner somebody said something which led to something and so on until we had a question and Michele, Peter, and Ophelia immediately checked their smart phones for the answer.  It could have been anything, How many cars did the original  Delahaye company make? What is gold selling for right now? What is the largest Karst formation, around Yangshou in China or Halong Bay in Vietnam? Was Doug Tompkins the founder of  North Face? Any fucking thing! The answers are right there, on your smart phone, just waiting for us to ask for it.

In this case, the question was about how the rebels are doing in Tripoli. Everybody went for their smart phones, complaining about the bad coverage by CNN. It turned out that all three of them had Al Jazeera apps. More proof of our kindred spiritness. I think that this picture is Ophelia showing me her app while Peter and Michele are still struggling or, and this is more likely, lost in the story.

In the background, behind Ophelia’s head is a handful of thistles. Over the next couple of days, the thistles ripened and turned to seed. Michele thought that it was making a mess, but I kind of liked it. (The lamp, BTW, is a genuine Tiffany – signed, well, with a little stamped plaque – that my grandmother bought at a garage sale for $4.00.)