Yes, I’ve heard of those. Very specialized and esoteric! 
Whatever works, Steve. The lamp doesn’t show, just your gorgeous work, making the best use of what you have at hand.
Meanwhile in Michigan, the other day we got 4 to 6 inches (10-15 cm) of snow. But the crocuses are blooming, too. They are busy nearly all winter under the snow. Along with the peonies.
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Looks like there will be spring in Michigan … eventually. In California too but so very wet, cold and windy this year.
From a walk at a San Francisco beach. A couple of plants you don’t want to find in your own garden. From high in the sand cliffs the ice plant becomes ever more colorful the more stress it incurs.
Ice plant can be hard to eradicate but at least it doesn’t cause discomfort or worse like this California native, poison oak (backed by flowering acacia.
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We are basically spring now. It officially starts in a few weeks but we already have some spring breakers here. There are already women in bikinis and dudes in shorts suntanning and getting sunburned. It was 84°f today. Now nights will still drop into the 40s and 50s on and off. It’s the time of year where at 6am you’re in sweats and at 10am you’re in just shorts. I like it though. Makes my electric bill low. I pull open my blinds and turn off my AC and the house stays warm and at around 6pm I open a few windows and it gets a bit cold and I sleep. During this time of year I can pay all my bills , excluding gas and groceries , in just one week.
Took him hiking with me again. Just 8 miles today. But once we got back and in the truck he just knocked out and slept basically the whole 50 minute drive back lol.
This one is lady lupine. Native forb.
Some really red lichen. I’m thinking it’s just a concentration of the Christmas lichen.
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Excellent lupine! I’d grow that one in a heart beat if I could make it happy.
I grew one that is hard to come by known as Cobb Mountain lupine. It looked its best the first year, pretty good the second and looked so miserable the third that I decided to donate its body to the compost pile. While the flowers are nice enough it is the glaucous, almost metallic luster of the leaves I liked best.
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I prefer unique foliage over flowers as well. Flowers are there typically for part of the season but the foliage is there most of the year. I like flowers for sure and find them very important, but I’m always looking for cool leaves and bark. It’s like with most trees they seem to have unnoticeable flowers but their just as beautiful with their multicolored bark covered in a rainbow of lichen and so many have leaves that are just absolutely beautiful with two shades , or even two completely different colored sides of leaves. So you’ll see flashes of white and dark green as leaves flip and flutter in the breeze. Not to mention the leaves of things like the pitcher plants ( the pitcher is the leaf ) with their greens, whites and reds are prettier than a lot of flowers.
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Found some Elliot Bkueberries today. Found like 15 bushes of them. I’ll definitely be back in a few weeks and collect a bunch, if birds don’t eat them all first. Also found the typical American poke weed. It’s edible but must be prepped so it does not kill you. There were also tons of dewberry flowers, like thousands of them there.
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I passed 15000 pictures with the microscope on Thursday:
13000 (Teinostoma)
13500 (Monoplex ?)
14000 (Odostomiinae incertae sedis)
14500 (Pyrgiscus)
15000 (Phlyctiderma)
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El gato
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Maybe one thing I should do is snap a pic of the trees at this angle each day at around the similar time (evening) for a year straight and then merge it all together in a time lapse, although I’d probably give up within the first month
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Reminds me of my backyard. Even if you don’t do it everyday, even if it’s every few days then it’s still probably turn out as a cool pic. Is she a calico? I have a calico as well.
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Nope, although one of our cats is a calico (or possibly a mix of calico and tortoiseshell)
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Just back from Dinosaur Valley State Park on the Paluxy River on a camping trip. Thought I would share a few pics of the abundant Dino tracks. Also went by the Carl Baugh’s creationist museum there. Had a nice conversation with Carl about a mutual friend who recently passed away, Mr. Baugh was a throughly nice man who is no doubt sincere in his beliefs despite my disagreement with the authenticity of some of his displays, which I refrained from discussing under the circumstances. The park is a neat place to see if you are ever by there. The third picture here is given as proof that raccoons and humans co-exist.
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I think the vine is just dewberry/blackberry leaves.
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May well be. But poison ivy is pretty ubiquitous around here, as I have found out personally.
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Poison Ivy is thornless. But it’s always better to be safe than sorry. I’ve touched a bunch of plants that ended up having chemicals or needles under the leaves that hurt.
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