Pacific Coast Iris hybrids 2010, 2020

Hybrid Pacific Coast Iris, growing among hardy geraniums

Picture from May 16, 2010.

I'm mourning that I haven't seen any of these beautiful small irises around the house this year; there used to be several of them. And a particular loss, the beautiful white one with lavender and blue lines, that Cyndi gave me decades ago, from a Native Plant Society sale, is all gone. An idiot tenant had dug all of it's offspring out years ago, but there was one survivor - finally choked out by blackberries and neglect. The beautiful ground cover hardy geranium visible in this photo is almost gone too. It's shade tree had died, then they were dug out by the friend of a tenant, who thought he was weeding. They haven't recovered, not helped by being taken over by blackberries (mostly cut back now).

The tall purple iris just started blooming a few days ago, and the little white-with-blue-lines wild iris started blooming last week in the woods down the hill.

And the old-fashioned almost-wild roses down the hill by the highway just started blooming this week. They are always the earliest. And the lilacs. And I heard the first (Mountain?) chickadee song yesterday. 

May 1, 2020 There were lots of flowers on the tall dark red-violet iris in this area; last year's clearing was good for it. And the more sun from losing so many tall trees. There are still a few small plants of this beautiful small iris that should be in big clumps. And a few buds. One beautiful survivor is the small lavender-color ground cover Veronica Waterperry. The incomplete but careful hand clearing I did around and among it helped. Time to do it again this year, and really dig out the returning blackberries...

Bats in the bedroom again… August 8, 2013

Brown bat in bedroom June 26, 2006, 2am close-up. He was about to fly out the window when I flashed in his face. Whoa!

Two nights in a row, Aug. 4th and 5th. First time in several years. Cheesecake and I used to have our bailout protocol all figured out for when there was one circling the bedroom. (Screens are tighter now, usually.)

The first night it was very late, maybe 3:30 or 4 am. I was waked up by the *kittens* bouncing all over me and the bed, chasing it. By the bedside flashlight it looked like a small bat.

Small bat in bedroom, June 26, 2006, 2 am approx

So I grabbed the Spot *kitten*, who was closest, locked her up, then caught the others one at a time, and once they were all locked up, closed the bedroom door to wait for it to settle out.

Once all was quiet, I went back in with the flashlight. Didn't see it. (They usually settle clinging to a screen.) So I opened a window wide and left. By that time it was almost showing some light in the sky. Went to sleep for the rest of the night in a chair.

I had hoped that it had gotten out, but kept the kittens and Buddy locked inside all day, and not in the bedroom. Because in the past I have thought that a bat had gotten away, but as soon as I let the cats out, they found it. (Once  a very small one had crawled under the cat-house on the porch. They were trying to fish it out. Once there was a bat clinging to the shingle siding outside the bedroom. Several times one was still in the bedroom. Once in the torchiere lamp. It couldn't get out. After I had gone back to bed, I heard it skritching. Had to tip it out the window as soon as it was slightly light.)

So the next night, the bat appeared early, maybe 9:30 or 10:00pm. I was still reading, the light was still on, but luckily cats still locked up. It looked like a larger bat this time.

Medium-size black bat in bedroom, June 26, 2006, approx 2am Notice the same calendar is in this picture.

Leave, close door, wait for it to settle, go in and open window, and TURN OUT THE LIGHT. (Very important, otherwise there will be lots of bats in the bedroom, following bugs! See previous post about bats.)
http://wrwcolors.blogspot.com/2006/10/bats-in-bedroom.html

This time, it was so much earlier, I just read in the chair for an hour or two, then went back to bed. Good chance it had escaped, and seems to have done so.

Think I've found where it/they got in — screen pulled loose from frame, and I had left the window open too far so they could easily get in.

I'm sure that this time it wasn't this guy - you can see (there's that calendar again) how much larger he was, and brown not black.

These pictures, from June 26, 2006, when I stood out on the porch roof and took pictures, the time I cleverly opened the window from the outside, thus leaving the light on, show, I think, three different species of bat.

I like my bats a lot. Haven't seen a mosquito for a month. But I prefer them outside, not in the bedroom.

Haven't heard them for a couple of years now. My extra-high-frequency hearing might be gone.  (Never heard them in the bedroom; apparently it's the social calls, not echo-location, which are in human hearing range, sort-of.) 

** The kittens are all grown up, though small, cats. But they still act like kittens. And they're my kittens, especially Rexie. (He thinks so too...)

Mom's Applesauce Cake 12/10/2011

batik furoshiki from Japan

No, this isn't applesauce cake. This is a gorgeous hand-painted batik furoshiki she bought the year we were in Japan. I've always loved it, from long before I ever tried to do any batik.

Her applesauce cake recipe was in her old hand-written cook book, with notes for instance on how she cooked the turkey each year when I was a kid. She knew right where it was on a shelf when I asked her, and I made the cake the first week I was there, when she could still enjoy it.

The unfamiliar ingredient in this recipe is cornstarch. What is cornstarch doing in a cake recipe? Well, I think it is like putting it in apple pie; the cake can have lots of applesauce in it, and be moist, without falling apart. This recipe is from long before things like carrot cake and zucchini bread.

In fact, her cookbook says her mother got the recipe from Mom's godmother Mrs Dorsey Ridge.


Mom's Applesauce Cake      ( from Mrs. Dorsey Ridge, approx 1920)

Put in large bowl, then sift together:

2 cup flour
2/3 c sugar
1 tsp soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves or allspice
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3 Tablespoons powdered chocolate (or cocoa is ok) (Kelvin doubles this)
1 T cornstarch
(pinch non-refined sea salt?)  (Her recipe did not call for any, but it seemed a little bland last time.)

Add and mix in:

1 c nuts  (she used walnuts) optional
1 c raisins

Add and stir in:

1 1/2 - 2 c sweetened applesauce  (1 1/2 may be more like she made, she said.)
1/3 c oil or melted butter  (Or I substitute yogurt sometimes.)

Turn into a buttered loaf pan.
Bake at 350°F for 45 minutes to 1 hour
until toothpick comes out clean.
Maybe cover with aluminum foil at the end, if it is getting too dark before the inside is done.

When I was a kid, she kept a canister of 6 times the dry ingredients mixed up. Then she could quickly take 3 cups of that mix to make a loaf.

Great toasted with butter for breakfast.


After Thanksgiving, when she was in the hospital bed, and had stopped eating solid food, I was heating in the microwave a piece of this cake I had made for my brothers' visit, and I heard her call loudly from the bedroom "Cut the bread! Cut the bread!"  I took a piece in there, and broke off a small corner to put in her mouth - and she smiled... so beatifically.


Dec 11, 2011
Just got the oven fixed, after more than a year when I couldn't bake. And the first thing I made, to take to the last day of class, was this applesauce cake. She always used to make it during the holidays, for my sister's and brothers' birthdays. 

Yesterday it was 2 years since she died. Just since the end of summer am I starting to get things done again.


July 13, 2013
I just made applesauce cake again last night. It's funny, I follow the recipe, but it isn't the same as her dense, dark cake. I even put in walnuts this time, like she did. Maybe it's the type of chocolate/cocoa. (I have Guittard, I think she had Hershey's in her cupboard.) And maybe she used her home-made applesauce. . .

The cake keeps well and stays moist.

Full moon puzzle

full moon mandala photo, @15 sec. July 22, 2013 1am

The full moon was clear and bright in a black sky. The exposure was 15 seconds, f6.3, with a tripod.

Apparently that was enough time for the close bright moon to light up the surrounding sky.

I don't know why the photo has a star shape, with hexagonal patches of light, and a greenish sky color, but I like it.

This doesn't look like a heat wave . . . July 4th, 2013 noon

July 4th, 2013 noon - over 100 degrees today

But it was.

With the clouds and extra moisture, it was hot and muggy, and didn't cool off as well at night. And around 100 degrees F all week!

At least the possible thunderstorms didn't happen and cause fires.

This week, July 18, it's about to heat up again, after a week of low 80s. 100 degrees by Saturday.

Amazing how cool 80 degrees feels in the summer. And how hot it is in the spring.

And at the end of that week, walking up the hill, I met a neighbor who said how cool 90 degrees felt!

Of the 2 tall trees on the left, the right one was the redtails' home tree. You can just see that steep crotch, near the top. You see how far away it really is.

Now that I've posted a sun halo, I guess I should show a sundog

picture from fall 2011

This picture is of a sundog, related to the halo. Often they come in pairs; this one was single. Called sundogs because they follow the sun around. There can be one on each side of it, at 22 degrees.

Since I learned that they exist, I've been seeing them 3 or 4 times a year. Before that, I never saw them, even during the years I worked outdoors, until the end when I knew about them.

This is the best one I've seen.

Update: for best sky pics, especially without a polarizing filter, try lowering your exposure by a stop or even 2 stops. Or, of course, do that afterwards in Photoshop by adjusting the exposure setting.

Aligned hexagonal ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. This one shows the prism-effect of spectral colors too.

After the rain

Just after the rain stopped, June 25, 2013, 5:30pm

Rain?! After the rain? No kidding?

Yep. It rained solidly for about 2 days. Not a hard rain, but a steady soaking. Something about a large Arctic low moving the jet-stream, and oceanic tropical moisture. It was a warm storm, just down to the 60s F.

Actually, it often does rain in June here, but not every year. It is more surprising this year because of the warm dry spring we had.

This picture is looking out over the top of the grocery store, between tall trees, from the bus bench across the street, about an hour after the rain stopped on Tuesday. There are houses all around, and under those trees too — but what a lovely view. And the clouds sitting on the tops of the hills.

Today, Wednesday, it was a lovely walk to campus. The air yesterday and today was very soft-feeling, with all the moisture, and warm.

By next Tuesday, the temperature is supposed to be back up to 101 degrees F.

I decided years ago that if it ever didn't look like this here, I wouldn't want to live here anymore.

Halo around sun, June 18, 2013

Picture of sun halo, June 18, 2013

And I got a picture.

Unfortunately, too large to fit in the camera's field-of-view.

Ice crystals in the high atmosphere. . .

It wasn't supposed to get to 100 degrees F the first week in June

June 8, 2013 sunset

But this year it did.*


Two years ago, the kittens and I were enjoying fires in the woodstove the first week of June. 

*Not here at this house among tall trees, on the brow of a hill, where it only got to the mid-90s. But in the neighboring town it did. Record-breaking heat for the whole of Northern California.

Serendipity

Self-portrait photo, April 28, 2013

 This picture happened by accident. In the Corel Painter class I was taking this semester, I needed a photo to base a computer-painted self-portrait on. I was probably going to use one taken by a friend in a class last year, but as insurance I went out on the balcony on a sunny afternoon to try to take some side-lit shadowed pictures.

I am very un-photogenic. And I was in front of the camera, not behind it, so I couldn't see what I was getting. The sun was in my eyes. The kittens came by to see what was going on, and got bored and went away. I took lots of pictures, which meant that I had to go through hundreds of desperately ugly pictures to find a few not-so bad ones.

But this one had kind of a nice smile...

I didn't know that the corners of my mouth turned down when I smiled - way beyond my ability to draw.

But I didn't see until I had enlarged it onscreen —  a reflection in my glasses. No wonder I was smiling. Lassie the kitten is reflected there. She was sitting on the railing in the sun. 

The kittens are my darlings, even grown up.


This is minimally photoshopped, in terms of making myself look better, the usual use of Photoshop. I turned down the red sunburn color some. And I photoshopped out the tape holding my glasses together. My usual style of eliminating distractions without materially changing the effect.

In other ways, there is significant photoshopping:

• To make more interesting shadows, I duplicated layers, then set the top one to multiply at a lower opacity.  
• I substituted a virtual batik background for the porch shingles. 
• I made my shirt aqua instead of blue.

I think all that makes a better image.

But that reflection in the glasses — I couldn't have planned that.

The first sighting

First redtail at sunset May 22, 2012

 Suddenly, last year, 2012, on May 22, there were redtails sitting on top of the tall pine trees in front of the house. Two of them. These pictures were taken at about 7:30 the first evening, while the last light was on the treetops. They were both up there at the same time, though not in the same camera view.

Always before, when I heard them occasionally up on top of the trees, they had been on the ones right over the house, which I can't see the top of.

Second redtail at sunset May 22, 2012

The second one seems a little darker than the first.

The next day or so, as I walked down the hill, once there were 3 adult redtails circling, soaring, riding the thermal.

Between the 22nd and the 28th, I saw them several times sitting up there on the tall trees.

May 31, 2013 This year, although I've seen and heard them at the other end of the trail to campus, they don't seem to be coming back to here. I hope they didn't try to go to the neighbors' place, that once cut down trees in nesting season, and the redtails that were here then vanished. There weren't redtails nearby here for years. Just yesterday that neighbor started some new construction project.

I am going to miss seeing 'my' redtails, but maybe I can get last year's photos sorted at last.

Summertime, and the living is easy

New sailboat, summer 1969

Summertime, and the living is easy......and the cotton is high.

It's easy to guess that the person who wrote those lyrics had never picked cotton.

Neither have I, but my first job was as summer field labor in an experimental barley field. That was in the pre-sunscreen era, and it took only one day for me to figure out that someone as pale-skinned as I needed long sleeves and a hat.
(Why  it took me that long I don't know, I always burned badly.) And summertime work out in a hot sunny field is not easy at all.


The year I was a freshman in college, the woman who graduated as  the valedictorian that year had earned her way through college picking fruit in the Wenatchee Valley. I was very impressed.


The little sailboat is from a few years later. That's me, and our dad behind the mast, and a brother. And one year an article had been published about PABA (para-amino-benzoic acid). So Dad mixed up some in alcohol, and my sister and I tried it while sailing across the lake. We were amazed that we didn't sunburn at all.

And around here, the living is not so easy in summertime.

True it's not between 42 degrees F and 52 on the main floor (I used a refrigerator thermometer to check that, since the thermometer on the non-functional thermostat only goes down to 52.) Sometimes 52 degrees is a lot colder than other times…

And not between 50 and 60 degrees on the top floor. The higher temperatures are after several sunny days, or when there's been a fire in the woodstove.

And I'm not wading through a foot of snow to carry firewood from the garage to the house and upstairs after several days of the power being out, like a couple of years ago. (Normally I try to carry firewood up between storms.)

Yes, it only takes 5 minutes to dress in one layer of clothes, but more baths/showers and more laundry.

But the main thing is that it takes half an hour to go around morning and evening closing/opening curtains and/or windows, and turning on and off fans and sprinklers. And when it's hot, it's hot.

When the living is really easy here is right now, spring and fall, in the weeks when the temperature is fine and the windows can be left open to screens all day and all night. Between rain or snow storms. Before the weather gets too hot. With fresh spring vegetables or fall harvest at the grower's market.

Except it's pollen season now, or just finished. Drifts of yellow everywhere. Can't leave the windows open to let that blow in. Can't leave them open again until I've cleaned and vacuumed window-sills, porches, low roofs. Then I will be able to see if it's really over. The recent rains might have finished it, but the pollen cones haven't fallen off the pines yet.

It looks so peaceful here on campus this morning May 14, 2013

Koi pond, morning May 14, 2013 8:30 am

But a mountain lion was seen here early this morning, and they have closed the trails. Including the one I walked to school yesterday morning.

I have heard that the half-grown ones disperse looking for new territories, and at night, following greenbelts and wooded areas and watercourses, all of which are here, they can get a long way into populated areas before dawn. Surprising everyone.

I can just imagine a mountain lion sitting on that big rock. . . 

Update May 20, 2013: 

The paper said it was a large mountain lion.

The bus driver said he hadn't seen the usual several groups of early-morning deer for 2 weeks.

But I heard that someone on campus early that morning had seen a larger herd of deer running down the hill very fast — much faster than usual. "As fast as they could go."

No kidding.

I'd love to see a mountain lion in the wild, but not quite that close.

Rain on the roses

Wild roses April-May 2012

Not in this picture, which was taken last year. (I turned it in for the Digital Photography class. There's a tiny spider…) But the last few days have been some of the very few "precipitation events" we have had this year since the beginning of January. At least it helped to contain several early fires.

This week the air has been very soft and moist, with full clouds and intermittent rain. Warmish down in the valley, coolish here in the foothills. And rain on these naturalized old-fashioned roses, which bloom earlier than the modern types, the end of April usually, I think, and part of May.*

This year it did snow and close down campus one day. And it took the prof an hour to get out of the parking lot! I had walked home by then. It's only a 50-minute walk.

That's compared to a couple of years ago, when we lost several Thursdays of classes to snow, and the kittens and I were enjoying fires in the wood-stove in the first week of June.

Raindrops on dogwood May 7, 2013

 The regular dogwoods, the eastern one, had already finished blooming for quite some time before these started. I think these little trees may be fairly new - I don't remember seeing them blooming before.

 *I don't know what variety the roses are. They get no water and reliably bloom each year. Don't seem susceptible to powdery mildew, like the similar naturalized one up the hill by the house, that has climbed a small tree and taken it over.

A Mischief of Kittens 2013-2feb20

Photo taken Nov 1, 2010

Collective nouns. Traditionally there were many in English, mostly neglected or forgotten now. You may have heard of a murder of crows. Or, of course, a herd of cattle, a flock of sheep (or geese), a covey of quail.

The traditional collective noun for cats was clowder - a clowder of cats. Which happens to translate to clutter. And a clutter of cats is very appropriate as they lie around everywhere… in the bookcases, on the books… On top of my head!**

Although, going for walks with a bunch of cats, I always thought a covey of cats was appropriate for the way they eddied around my feet.

But for kittens, awake, lively kittens, boxing, or chasing each other or a bug, or busily randomizing the contents of my bedroom, (dumping over sorted boxes of papers and making a fort!) I do think a mischief of kittens is very right. (These names may not be original to me, I might have read them somewhere.)

And for innocent sweet sleeping kittens, certainly a clowder of kittens might work.

But for them all in a pile together, or next to my sides, or under my chin - a cuddle of kittens…

photo taken 2011

**Rex who still thinks he's a kitten, my kitten, insisted on sleeping on top of my head last night! (Update 2/21 — the last 2 nights.) He usually sleeps on my shoulder, leaning against the side of my face. Or under the covers next to me. But last night Buddy was with us inside for the first time, so the door to the room with the woodstove could be open. And Rex did not like Buddy's being on the bed (judging from the growling).

I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt. And part sitting up against the pillows. And Rex went up on top of my head, next to the pillow, and slept there for a long time. I think it might have been a sort of King of the Castle thing, but mostly "Mine - grrr".

A lovely bit of spring garden

I took this photo a couple of years ago in Nevada City. Must have been about this time of year, since the creeping phlox are sheets of color around town now, and some smaller tulips are blooming.

I wonder how I'd extend the season? Something vigorous, to compete with the creeping phlox, although it helps that it wants to grow over the edge, towards the main light. Re-blooming daylilies for summer, I think. Peach and wine colors... Or since this is in town, maybe no deer, (the tulips wouldn't be there if there were deer.)  Madonna lilies for late spring/early summer. A smaller-scale ornamental grass? Catmint?

What a charming visual gift to the passerby!