Bioregional Bookshopping

Today I picked two new books at the campus bookstore. The first, by UCD landscape architecture professor Rob Thayer, is entitled LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice. He is part of a school here of bioregional thinkers and practitioners centered around the Putah and Cache Creek watersheds. Rob Thayer’s new book draws happily for me upon all sorts of local examples for his material.

The second book is Tim Manolis’ new field guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of California. It is beautifully illustrated by the author with over 40 plates done mostly in colored pencil. (It’s always striking how illustrations are much more effective in a field guide than photographs). Pica and I know very little about insects, but we had an introduction to dragonflies on a Yolo Audubon Society walk up at the North Davis Ponds a couple of years ago.

The Glade on the Way to Work

Probably my favorite bit on my bicycle ride into work is passing this little glade just south of the UC Davis Arboretum. There are several handsome walnut trees in it, and often it is used for pasture for animals belonging mostly to the Vet Med folks. A few weeks ago there were cattle, but right now there are about a half-dozen horses in the pasture as well as this donkey. Animals bring a civilizing influence to a campus—some of the horses will come over and say hello, and the donkey always regards me with calm bemusement.

As the joke goes, what UCD stands for is “Under Construction Daily”, and according to the current long-range development plan for the campus this parcel is slated to become part of a research park, hosting one or two three-story buildings and many, many parking places. It’s all very rational, the planning process is, with dividers in their thick binders sectioning off the chapters on scenic, habitat, and cultural values, but somehow I think the world would be better off if planners were compelled to become accomplished landscape painters before they ever touched a computer. Sigh. At least the long-range plan and forthcoming environmental impact report are still open for public review and comment.

The watercolor outing

Numenius and I went out on a sketching outing to the Arboretum this afternoon. On the left is my attempt at a lupine with a California poppy behind it.

On the right is Numenius’ fremontia branch: the tree is gloriously abloom just now.

Spring in the Central Valley

I just saw my first ash-throated flycatcher of the year. It was outside the kitchen window in the English walnut, flycatching. I don’t know what it’s finding to eat this early in the morning with a chilly north breeze, though last night there were thousands of flying insects in the pathway… in California we are bracing for the onslaught of West Nile Virus, predicted to hit in August. Nobody knows what it’s going to do to the endemic bird populations here—particularly the yellow-billed magpie.

Inspired by Richard Bell’s spectacular Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, I’m going to try my hand at some sketching today. The California poppies have been given a new lease on life with all the rain we’ve had recently. I love to see them in juxtaposition with the lupines-orange and blue, perfect complements-but the lupines are now almost all gone, so to see them together I have to go exploring. There are still some at the UC Davis Arboretum.

I wish I were better at drawing birds, but the way to get better is to go out and do it. Another good excuse not to clean the house…

Low-Power FM Radio Coming to Davis

The Federal Communications Commission has at long last issued a construction permit for a low-power community radio station in Davis that will be run by Davis Community Television. They have 18 months to get the 100-watt station on the air, which will be on the frequency 101.5 MHz.

Low-power FM radio has been a battleground for media activists such as the Media Access Project and the Prometheus Radio Project who are trying to maintain local community access to the airwaves. When the FCC put forth a proposal to establish a Low-Power FM Radio service, it was strongly attacked by a coalition of the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio (the latter earning my enmity in the process) and the bill in Congress nearly gutted.

But the proposal did get through Congress, albeit in watered-down form, and LPFM radio stations have slowly been getting licensed. There have been some clear successes, such as Radio Bird Street in Oroville. We are fortunate in Davis in being able to receive three independent radio stations already (KPFA in Berkeley, KDVS the local college station, and KVMR in Nevada City), but it will be great to have our own local community radio station.

An Elegy for Walnuts

The Solano County roads department is preparing to take out a row of California black walnuts (Juglans hindsii) along Old Davis Road to make room for bike lanes. It’s a little-traveled road, and I’m not sure that the benefits to the cyclists who use the road (mostly hard-core, with less need of bike lanes) warrant the loss of such a landscape feature.

This row of walnuts was well-established in 1937, when the aerial photograph (courtesy of the UC Davis library map collection) at left was taken. Formal roadside avenues of trees are scattered around the lower Putah Creek landscape, one of the most noteworthy being the row of walnuts on Russell Avenue west of Davis.

Juglans hindsii has an interesting history: it is widely naturalized in Northern California, but only two stands of the tree, in Napa and Contra Costa counties, are considered native to their sites. The plantings of the black walnuts provide good wildlife habitat: in this row of trees we’ve seen roosting Swainson’s hawks, and nesting yellow-billed magpies and western kingbirds.

Rain on the Picnic

Last Saturday’s Picnic Day got seriously rained on. Picnic Day is UC Davis’ annual open house (first held 1909) and is the largest student-run event in the country. I watched the parade and then took cover inside.

The following is a photo of Jim Thorne in the disguise of an SUV as part of the Environmental Science and Policy Club float.





And what Picnic Day would be complete without the Doxie Derby, the dachshund races held in UCD’s Rec Hall? Here is a tense moment in the finals of the competition in the Standard division.

A Lament for Snow

I’m back from Ithaca, having decided in one day’s worth of explorations that it would be a great place to live, except that you have to deal with winter there. Indeed, the Northeast and Upper Midwest are getting their last(?) wintry blast now; the counties to the north of Ithaca got hit by a major ice storm, leaving 300,000 people without power.

But I like the snow and ice. It’s fun to be out in the cold weather, and see the ice on trees, and to kick your way through the snow. To get to the Ithaca airport yesterday, I walked from the Ramada Inn, maybe 1 1/2 miles, with a few hints of snow flurries in the air. Quite pleasant.

The weather back home in Davis just isn’t very interesting. It snows once every fifteen years or so, there are no nor’easters, never much chance of severe thunderstorms, tornados, or baseball-sized hail. Perpetual sunshine for most of summer. I think I’m too much of a weather hound to be living in the Central Valley.

Still, today was the best of spring days here, clear and with the temperature in the 70s. The western kingbirds are back—Pica noticed them on Sunday—but the american pipits and white-crowned sparrows haven’t left yet.

Ithaca Meanderings

I’m blogging this from the Ithaca-Tompkins County public library, a excellent library one block from the downtown Ithaca commons. Today is the day I’m devoting to exploring Ithaca; happily, the weather is nice, it being overcast and 40-ish but no rain yet. The past two days were very foggy, and we could scarcely see the Sapsucker Woods pond from our meeting table in the library of the new Cornell Ornithology lab building.

I am staying in the Ramada Inn, three or four miles from downtown, and right next to the Pyramid uber-mall. Talking to Diane Hillmann, a long-time Cornell University librarian who was at our meeting, the big-box malls are definitely changing the character of Ithaca, and the current mayor is pro-growth. Let’s hope the downtown area stays healthy.

There are at least three used bookstores downtown, two on the commons area. I picked up a copy of Jasper Fforde’s new Thursday Next book at The Bookery, a bookstore whose used sections features artists’ books. And there is a printmaking center, The Ink Shop across Cayuga Street from the commons. On the commons are mostly small businesses, including the food court where I picked up an mixed vegetable curry plate with a mango lassi from a fast-food Indian place for lunch.

It was too wet and the windows were too misty to see much from the bus going downtown yesterday, but on today’s trip there were good views. My plan was to get off somewhere in the middle of Cornell and explore there. The bus passed through North Campus, an area mostly occupied by residential dorms, went south, and I did a bit of a double take when we passed over quite an impressive creek. Off the bus I got, and went back to have a look at the gorge of Fall Creek. A campus with its own waterfalls! It’s very neat. It’s very hilly topography, the water draining into nearby Cayuga Lake. Downtown is more-or—less at the elevation of the lake, and the campus is on the rise northeast of downtown.

I am about to have a look at the local history collections here in the library, my ancestors having lived one county to the north 200 years ago or so. And after that, off to the local food coop.

Other People’s Gardens

Numenius and I have been housesitting in Village Homes, an eco-topic community built in the 1970s in Davis, California. The fronts of the houses face pedestrian walkways, not roads and cars; all the fruit trees are commonly owned; there is a large village green where we saw some children playing cricket (!) on Sunday; and the community vegetable gardens are lush and productive. The names of all the streets in this part of Davis are either places or characters from Lord of the Rings, which may have been an attempt to give them some kind of amulatory power against the evil cars (with mixed success). Originally this was the “alternative” place to live. Now houses sell within an hour of going on the market for staggering amounts. The demographic? Doctors with pony tails.

I have never really been much of a gardener, but I have been enjoying hauling out the weeds that have overtaken the front yard. Despite the origin of most of the inhabitants of this little paradise in 60s counterculture, overgrown weeds are not welcomed by neighbors. Neither, of course, is Round Up. So I have been getting sore hamstrings hauling them out by the roots. But I’ve been loving it… This is almost certainly because it’s not MY garden.

Perhaps we should all swap houses periodically so we can clean and weed with joy instead of dread. At any rate, the pink-and-green tulips in the raised bed that watch me, along with the Western scrub jay, while I furiously try and get the grasses out before they go to seed, are making this activity much more fun than it has any right to be.