Lichens!

Numenius and I attended a workshop yesterday put on by the UC Davis Center for Plant Diversity and the California Native Plant Society (Sacramento Chapter). Pam Kirkbride taught the workshop, which was a morning of lecture and practice keying (at which I have very little experience; Numenius has much more) followed by a field trip to just over the Napa County line, where lichens are far more diverse and numerous since it’s just inside the fog belt.

I had learned a little about lichens in connection with natural dyes at my spinning retreat with Judith Mackenzie in 2012. I learned a whole lot more yesterday — the various forms of lichens, their unique symbiotic biology (they are a relationship between fungi and algae), their sensitivity to pollution and other environmental stressors… and their great beauty. This was my first time using a dissecting workshop and now I want one.

I came home with some Ramalina (Spanish moss) I found on the oak woodland floor. I’d like to try it out on some white yarn I have. Lichen dyes don’t need a mordant because of their acidic chemistry. I’ll update when I have something to show!

The Nevada City Riddle

We’re going on an outing tomorrow for our anniversary, want to head towards the Sierras, and have come up with the idea of going to Nevada City for a short hike followed by lunch in town. Nevada City is not a town either of us knows much about, so the question becomes what do we do for our little spot of tourism?

After a brief look online I found myself headed to the campus bookstore to look in a guidebook for the Sacramento-Gold Country region to get a better sense of the town. Upon reflection this is curious. We’re in Year 22 of the World Wide Web, we’re told from many quarters that print is dead, long live the screen, yet my sense is that it’s easier to find reliable local knowledge about a place in a book than readily online. The first pages that come up in a search are for the city government (good if you need a building permit, not so much if you’re trying to get a sense of the place), the chamber of commerce (avoids playing favorites among the businesses), and then digging a little further one comes across reviews in services such as Yelp, but these are easily gamed and always have the air of the outsider about them.

By now the Internet has ossified into a number of structural forms that are changing on a fairly long time scale (5 to 10 years), and for whatever reason there is a big gap between on-the-ground local knowledge and virtuality. In Davis we are lucky to have the Davis WIki which is a knowledge base to which many locals contribute. Though the Davis Wiki has a few progeny, the list of such communities is quite short and the sense is the Davis Wiki and its ilk are the exceptions that prove the rule.

For now, we’ll find a short trail near town, and then have a wander downtown. Walking is always the best way to learn anyway.

Underway on the Rails

I’ve been away for a week now and have seen hundreds of miles of country, some arid, some snowy, such as it is here in Tyrone, home of Via Negativa’s Dave Bonta.

Travelng by train is a curious mix of fast food convenience, nineteenth- century nostalgia (several stations in Illinois had hosted debates in which Lincoln was a participant), and the feeling that you’ve entered a fifties-style diner where a group of locals is sitting around shooting the breeze, but by virtue of having boarded the train, you are automatically a member of the group.

Several people pointed me to a recent New York Times article about train travel in the US. Most of what’s in the article has rung true for me, though I think every single passenger on every train I’ve boarded since last Tuesday could have written a different version of that article.

Nice to have two nights at Dave’s. I’ll be on my way to Boston tomorrow via Philadelphia. I’ll travel through my mother’s childhood and adolescence, feeling their force with none of the details that memory catches like butterflies, rising on a warm spring day. I am not sure what my own childhood train memory trip would look like, but I’m about to follow my mother’s.

As Spotted From The Bus

I went on an outing to San Francisco today, ending up at the Legion of Honor museum after taking the train to Emeryville, the Amtrak bus to the Financial District, and the 38L bus out Geary to the Outer Richmond district. The following were some noteworthy items spotted from the buses:

• A truck labeled “Matthew International – Casket Division” (note – although Matthew International is traded on the NYSE, they do not mention their casket division anywhere near their home page)

• A restaurant: Volcano Curry of Japan

• Another restaurant: Five Happiness Restaurant (why five? why not four, or six?)

• The Right Way Market and Deli

• Two closed down old movie theatres on Geary: the Alexandria, and the Bridge. The marquee on the Bridge said “SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR THE POPCORN”

• The Anti-Saloon League (established 1920)

• In fading paint on the side of a building: “E. M. O’Donnell Copper Works”

Deluge

Lots of rain lately! From last Thursday the 29th to Sunday morning, we got 4.07 inches of rain in three tightly spaced storms, the warm air not producing much snow in the mountains. We had a casualty though. On Sunday morning Pica looked out the window and saw that the almond tree fell over. We evidently slept through the crash; the weather station log said that the wind speed got up to 31 MPH early in the morning. We’ll miss the tree, especially for the sweet harbinger of spring when it blooms in February before leafing out.

A Day At The Fair

We went to the California State Fair today because Pica was helping Robin Lynde of Meridian Jacobs sheep farm with her stall in the livestock hall. Pica spent much of her time drum carding wool at the booth, an activity which a lot of people were curious about, and I was free to wander all about the fair. After doing an initial pass through the exhibit halls, I started sketching, beginning at the western end of the fair, where all the rides are (at left) and ending back in the livestock hall (see below at right).

More Gray Foxes

So the gray fox family is doing well. Five pups, now about 12 weeks old. I was able to catch the male this evening as he was guarding the whole territory. They make a funny kind of bark, like a terrier but much deeper, growling in there somewhere. (Below is a photo of the male barking at me.)

Having wild creatures like this so close to an urban area is thrilling but also worrying — too many cars going way too fast. For now, they seem fine.

Gray Foxes

We’ve been noticing a gray fox around where I work. There’s a meadow that is more or less kept mowed between my building and a horse paddock; it hosts a lot of wildlife, much of it prey for things like red-shouldered and Swainson’s hawks, coyotes, and the feral cats we seem never to quite get rid of.

About three years ago I spotted a gray fox near the railway tracks. It was my first ever near our house and I was elated. Seems like they’re moving in, because this fox we’ve been seeing recently is a vixen with two pups. They have a den under the building I work in.

This sketch is of the mother who climbed a toyon tree to get onto a sea container in order to put us under surveillance last night. We made very quick sketches and backed away, not wanting to put her under any more stress. The pups, two of them, played happily in the twilight… Hope they stay away from the road and that they get enough to eat.

Spring Migration

I left Massachusetts for California in 1996, in mid-June after the end of spring migration. It was the best migration for years. For some strange reason I’ve left it sixteen years to return there in May. I don’t know why. What I do know is I’m not going to leave it another sixteen!

I spent most of the time with my mother who will be 80 this year. We birded. We sketched. We explored the Maine coast north of where she now lives. It was a fantastic visit, punctuated by warbler song and azaleas, warm rain, tearful belly laughs over a lamentable restaurant experience. Movies and popcorn.

Back home: no parulas singing here but I returned to this beautiful Carpenteria californica in bloom. This plant is incredibly rare in the wild: only seven known sites in Fresno and Madera counties. It has a light, orange fragrance. It’s in the arboretum’s moon garden and I’m glad I planted two. As we prepare to go out and watch the annular eclipse this evening, it can do the light and shade thing for us…

Rainy Month

March comes to an end, being the rainiest month so far in the 2011-2012 water year. (Because California has a Mediterranean climate, yearly totals for precipitation are considered to begin on October 1st.) We recorded 4.81 inches this month, bringing the total for the year to about 11.7 inches. This is well behind normal, which is about 15.5 inches to date. Tuesday it poured — 1.5 inches of rain — and today we had showers and big winds, with 0.15” of rain.

Last morning we heard what sounded like a western kingbird, but didn’t believe it, since it seems awfully early for kingbirds. (A mockingbird imitating a kingbird?). But this afternoon I went for a walk out the levee leading past the Raptor Center, and saw at least two and possibly four kingbirds. An early spring for them?