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Came across a species of what I believe is a moth. If it is a moth it’s the first one I’ve seen that rests with its wings in a folded up position. It’s all white. The black light makes it look purplish but it’s white. I’ve posted it to 2 groups for insect ID and no answers yet and I did not find it in my book. Maybe soon I’ll get lucky lol.
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I’ll need to be watching for a fawn or two pretty soon – she’s pretty round. Out the kitchen window:
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European Hedgehog anyone? Just sitting outside the backdoor the other night - in truth I nearly stepped on it!
Clearly, I didn’t traumatise it too much as it came back the next evening. Caught this on my Passive Infrared wildlife camera:
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I would love it if those came around here. My fantasy is I go to the plant nursery and buy a bag of babies of these the way we can ladybugs and mantids. (I don’t anticipate that coming true but they have great smiles.)
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IDed as Polyphylla occidentalis
Found a lovely beetle little while ago. Don’t know it’s ID yet. The pictures don’t really do a great job but it had blueish eyes that were really pretty.
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Beautiful. Temp yesterday was 101, so spring is fast becoming a thing of the past here.
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We still had snow last week! Temps are up to 60s to 70s starting this week. It is neat to compare. Whenever I am tempted to complain of the cold here, I look up the weather in Yellowknife, Northwest Territory, Canada. Winters are frequently -40 with a high of -10.
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Lucky bugs get a good quality tea with breakkie.
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A yellow violet (I think–do you have another name?) And dogwood. Beautiful, 80.degree weather this weekend.
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It certainly looks like a Violet and it is yellow…
Don’t you think ‘violet’ is a silly name for a plant which comes in several colour forms other than Violet?
Unless the person who first discovered it named it after his girlfriend… Or his mum.
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That was already taken by the one who named the chrysanthemum, right? 
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Touche, sir, touche. 
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We’ve been staying put in our garden for what feels like forever and I’m really missing going to Fort Funston with my wife and dogs. So I thought I’d share some photos from there.
We see coyotes, rabbits, whales, dolphins, seals, crabs and jellyfish here but mostly we see shore birds.
This Indian Paintbrush is one of several natives they’ve been trying to reestablish.
But even the ice plant and grasses appeal to me.
The land is mostly sand with some irregular boulders thrown in and that gets shaped in interesting ways.
I’ve posted sunrise photos from here before which I see here more often than sun downs. But being the west coast sunset can be pretty nice too.
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One part of nature I really like is standing in the present and looking back into the past based off of what you’re seeing. It’s not mind blowing, but many never bring the thoughts to the front of their minds and study it out. Such as with this sweet gun tree. You can tell by looking at its bark what it’s been through recently and that’s it’s on its way out. Still it may be here another 20 years but despite being young its dying.
You can tell part of the problem begin with a vine that was choking it. You can see the pattern left by it in the bark. You can see where a sapsucker woodpecker has been making its trips around this tree a lot. Most sweet gums have deeply deeply ridged bark. This one has almost none. You can see where parts of the bark has flaked off. There are signs of jelly fungus developing on it. At the base of the trunk you see shoots popping up and it’s roots are up higher than all the others around it meaning it’s having a hard time getting the oxygen it needs in the soil below. It’s roots are probably wrapping around itself choking it self out. That’s probably why it’s having a harder time getting the energy it needs and so it has lots of abnormally large leaves on it as well. When it goes to seed, it’s probably pumping out a significantly more amount of fruits and seed to help ensure it’s genetic survival. Underneath it you’ll notice several more woody shrub saplings popping up. Nature is probably altering them all that this is where they need to be because when this tree does and topples over there will be abundance of resources for them to survive off of. The canopy will open letting in more lights and as the tree decomposes it will help retain moisture and feed the soil.
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Looks like a case of: the more you know, the more you see.
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It was (probably) a flower before it was a color. Same (again probably) with ‘pink’.
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Well the old rhyme did go roses are red and violets are blue lol. Though its debated if it was meant as in blue or blew.
I do attribute it to the The Faerie Queene of the 1500s. The genus though is believed to have been used all the way back to the 6th century I believe. Meant roadside or something. I believe the name as a color came afterwards.
But I’m not very certain and remember next
To nothing. Most just remember buying the book The Faerie Queen from some bookstore named Pluto’s I believe in cannon beach, or lol.
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