When I moved from the DC area to the SF Bay Area after 10th grade I got a lot of yearbook messages regarding the state of California slipping into the ocean. Earthquakes can be bad but the extreme weather you get in your neck of the woods. I guess what you get used to factors into it but I don’t think I’d be willing to trade.
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You definitely just get use to it. It’s a way of life. The worse part is when a storm messed up infrastructure and so you lose power for a week or two. But in few years I won’t have to worry about it anymore for the most part. Once I build the house I’m wanting here I’ll be able to also to bring in a propane tank that feeds gas to the house. I’ll link it up so the kitchen snd master bed and bath is hooked up to it. So even if we lose power I’ll have 2 weeks worth of energy. By then the power will be back on. I enjoy where I live because of the nature. It’s a hotspot for flora and fauna.
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The Seek app agrees: Zigadenus glaberrimus.
Have you ever seen a small cicada? 
I believe that the cicada’s ‘song’ (like most stridulating insects) is linked to body temp. So they’d likely be as quiet as a mouse in the rain.
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Yeah many are 1/8th that size. It could just be younger ones, or a different species. I am not sure how many species there are of them here.
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Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi):
aka tall bluestem or turkeyfoot, for obvious reasons:
Not grass, but careful forensics leads me to believe…
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Goldenrod is the state flower (I just learned from my wife, my not having grown up here… or anywhere else ), but I’m not sure it is this species:
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One of the state’s nicknames is “The Beef State”, being well known for its cornfed beef. Cornfed beaver? Not so much.
Looking from one side of our lane (notice the gaps between the stalks where some have been cut off, and in the rows behind):
On the other side:
Traveling a little further, ca. 50m, a lot of stalks(!) – they must take the ears for storage and leaf the rest. () You can just make out the dam – a log or two is lodged against it where the creek widens midway back:
You can’t get the perspective on this, but their steep slide is about 2 m long from the top of the bank, which is at least 1.5 m above the water:
Bonus – ant lion sand traps:
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Lovely sunset with lots of purplish pinks.
A shot of the bog I was hiking in yesterday.
I can’t upload videos here but it was a Candyman joke. No bees harmed.
Some lovebugs, and a moth stuck inside the leaf ( pitcher) of the Whitetop Pitcher Plant.
Green Lynx Spider. 95% of the time I find them on the taller pitcher plants.
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I’ve been walking the beach at Fort Funston in San Francisco more often again in order to give my not quite fully vaccinated pup some exercise in what I hope is a safer setting, carrying her down to the beach in a big back pack and then walking her off leash along the water’s edge. Today I was noticiing how beautiful the place is in a post apocalypse, crumbing way with many of the plants able to survive in this crumbling sand being escaped garden mongrels and weeds.
Leading down the north path to the beach access:
There are more intact fortifications here from WWII, but in this area they are eroding out of the sandstone and liter the beach.
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That’s a lot of pitcher plants! And you should tag @LM77 for your spider photos. But I will if you don’t, so no problem.
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I was there ca. 1989, and yeah, that’s different. The big battery on top is still there, though, I presume. The would have to be mega-erosion for it to go! How far up did that cast arc used to be?
It is but we almost never visit those. Weird.
Nice to see real life beavers, none near me of course. But this made me laugh as I could claim the same and can imagine stealing this turn of phrase.
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There is a bunch of pitcher plants. There are actually thousands of them out there spread out over the acres. Around 8 species and several hybrids. Also lots of other carnivorous plants as well like bladder warts and sundews.
Coolest place though is about 2 hours north with about 250 acres of pitcherplants growing wild with a longleaf forest as the backdrop. But also lots of Black bears.
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They are weird, or eerie. A good place to for someone to make a horror flick for @SkovandOfMitaze. 
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Some kind of foxtail grass in the foreground with an errant turkeyfoot above left of center. I didn’t have a closeup for the Seek app to narrow it down, so I cropped another closer photo to make it larger and the app came back with an African millet. I guess I won’t count on that technique.
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Not my photos, but I enjoy the BBC selection often
Wildlife photo: Is this the world’s most beautiful mosquito? - BBC News
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So they found a missing stargate on a San Francisco beach! Exciting! [sci fi geeks will get it]
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Amazing photos! Love that mosquito with legs warmers! 
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They’re making drones pretty small now, too:
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