19 July 04
Post the All-Star Break
Wimbledon’s over, we’re in the final week of the Tour de France, and the circus that is baseball’s All-Star game is finally put away. Now we can get serious about the various standings, start to pay attention when poor Tampa Bay beats the dreaded Yankees, as they did today.
The rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees is famously one-sided. New York smiles smugly at the little provincial New Englanders from up the coast and occasionally seems genuinely hurt by the level of vitriol hurled in its direction. Not understanding why everyone doesn’t automatically love a winner.
Remind you of anyone?
18 July 04
Birds On The Move
Fall migration appears to be getting underway. We just heard a report of about 50 Swainson’s hawks kettling early in the morning near Dixon and heading south. They’re at least a month or more early. And late this afternoon there was a flock of about several dozen swallows, probably tree, overhead and most likely migrating through. Soon there will be good shorebird action.
17 July 04
Too Many Ducks
There was an article in yesterday’s faculty and staff newspaper, Dateline, about the overpopuation of ducks at the UC Davis Arboretum. Apparently the number of ducks that can be sustained in this body of water is about 2.96, given how much water vegetation there is.
There are, however, probably over 300 ducks instead of three, fed by well-meaning people and also by Guerrilla Girl. They used to catch the ducks with nets. I’m not quite sure what they’re doing these days to control the population, but whatever it is, it’s not working…
16 July 04
Cats And Nooks
This is a note for the Ecotone Wiki topic on secret places.
One of the things that has been amazing to watch while fostering our kittens is how cats have such a wonderful instinct for finding secret nooks. Last week I was clearing some space in one of our bookshelves on the floor, and it took the kittens about fifteen seconds to go across the room and be inside the newly created bookshelf space. And of course closet doors are notorious difficult to open without attracting the attention of a kitty or two. It’s a very different world than ours to explore if you’re about eight inches tall, sleek, and graceful.
Here’s a photo of Charlie retreating under our bed, the space under our bed being a very defensible position.
15 July 04
The Secret Garden
Well, it’s not really so secret: this vaguely illegal garden sits at the corner of J and Second Streets in Davis, right next to the railway lines. It changes with the seasons; it’s bedecked with plastic pumpkins around halloween, which morph into poinsettias in time for Christmas; full of pastels for easter.
This garden is tended by someone who-like Al of the 71-doesn’t have a whole lot in the way of possessions. But he (I’ll call him Arthur, though that’s not his name) is of the world, perhaps more than you or I. Because he just decided, one day, to make this little corner of Davis more beautiful so that a benefactor might be able to see it on his way to work by bike. Just like that. (He waters it copiously with a hose from across the street.)
The garden that started out with a couple of potted plants is growing, and now has a second section to the right of the photo. Nobody can really see it from a moving train, and many people who head down 2nd Street barely give it a thought. There is nowhere in Davis quite so colorful.
Which just goes to show. Our gardener friend is colorblind. (It’s a secret.)
This post is for the Ecotone Wiki’s joint blogging topic, Secret Places, for July 15. The wiki has recently been vandalized by spammers; we’re trying to keep it up and running but it’s a bit of a battle.
14 July 04
Waterbrushes
On our trip to the Sacramento Zoo last week, I tried out Pica’s Niji waterbrush. This is a synthetic brush that is attached to a squeezable handle that one fills with water. I was quite impressed with the utility of this tool, especially for field use in working with watercolor pencils and small watercolor pan kits. It provides a lot of control in how much water reaches the brush, and it is much easier ergonomically than filling a tiny cup with water and dipping a brush in it everytime one wants to add some brushwork to a watercolor pencil sketch.
Anyway, we ordered some more of these brushes in several different sizes from John Neal Books, and they arrived yesterday. Here is a sketch I did today showing Mt. Diablo at dusk, together with the 15mm waterbrush.
13 July 04
Older Bloggers
In March of last year Numenius posted about Samuel Pepys’ blog. We had only just started Feathers of Hope at that point; looking over these older entries is a bit like peeking over someone else’s shoulder.
Now it seems Thoreau has his own blog too. (Thanks to Dave of Via Negativa for alerting us to this.)
12 July 04
Into The Hills
It was a rest day today in the Tour de France, meaning that the riders only went on light training rides of 160 kilometers or so, and tomorrow the racing begins again, into the hills of the Massif Central. These mornings we’re following the live reports on VeloNews. The haikus submitted for Friday’s stage were especially good.
11 July 04
Bye Bye, Louie
Louie got adopted today by a sweet girl called Jane. He was her sixteenth birthday present. We’ll miss his lively chirruping around the house. What a change he is from the poor little huddled creature one May Wednesday morning in the carport…
10 July 04
Refuge From The Heat
Following a trip to the bike store for a new tube and patch kit, I spent some time this afternoon sketching in the Arboretum redwood grove. Over this past year, there has been a major landscaping project in the redwood grove: a whole host of volunteers put in about 20,000 forest floor plants, not to mention redoing the path with bark and mulch so it is no longer so muddy in winter. At left is my painting of one of the new plantings, a sword fern.