More when

Today I walked at Big Canyon and Eaton parks.  These are two small canyon hikes, pretty suburban, across the street from each other.  One of the many things I am interested in and would love to eventually write a paper about are parks that balance high recreation use with high habitat values.  There are a couple ways to do this; one is by having a high use-specific area, like a dog park or picnic grounds, and then separate trails.  The other is just luck (good planning, strong remnant population of natives, guerrilla weeders such as moi, few highly mobile invasives nearby).  Luck abounds at these two little parks, which have just as nice an array of natives as Edgewood or Pulgas Ridge, and not many more invasives.  Urban or suburban wildlands can never replace larger preserves, of course - where would the big mammals live? - but especially if there is connectivity, they are a crucial part of the overall scheme of habitat preservation and restoration.

Now that I've finished sounding like I am back in school, here's what I saw today, to add to this list.


2/27/11
Zigadenus fremontii - Fremont's death camas.  They look so much like they should smell, that I always smell them.  But they don't.  No matter how many times I smell them, they don't smell like anything.

Marah fabeceous - Manroot or California Wild Cucumber.  So there are actually two Marahs, which I think of as "My Marah" and "The Other Marah".  The Other Marah is Marah oreganus.  It was pointed out to me by Tom-the-plant-guy.  The leaves are spikier than My Marah, and the flowers are less scented.  This Spring I've seen both.

One of the invasive brooms, no, I cannot tell them apart.  Also flowering pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana, I think), but I'm not going to list grasses in here.  What a lazy botanist!!! 

Trillium sp. - Trillium (I can't tell those apart either.  See above about the lazy.)

Quercus agrifolia - Coast live oak

Dodecatheon hendersonii - Woodland Shooting Star.  Here is a fun explanation of the name.  "Dodeca-theon, twelve gods, the plants supposedly favored by deities; hendersonii for L. F. Henderson, northwestern botanist."

Fritillaria lanceolata - Mission Bells

Scoliopus bigelovii - Fetid Adder's Tongue.  I have wanted to see these for a long time and was just enchanted when I found them. I took a bunch of mostly terrible photos, and then made this one family's day by telling them where to find the flowers when they asked me about trail conditions.  They do not smell bad at all, but contrary to when should be happening, the longer I stay quit of smoking, the duller my sense of smell is getting.

Fetid Adder's Tongue at Pulgas Ridge

Ranunculus californicus - California Buttercup.

It was a very nice day, even though I am super sore from moving all my bedroom furniture around.  I seem to end up doing this every Spring, it's like a compulsion. Are birds this sore after refeathering their nests?  

After hiking, I slunk back around because there are a whole ton of dusky footed woodrat nests at the base of one of the trails.  I had hoped that since it was full dark, I would see one, but nope, they evaded me as usual.

What have you seen lately?  What have you wanted to see?

Toyon at Eaton Park

Good advice

I give good advice.  In our culture, to baldly state you do something well is considered vain, but that's just too bad, because I give really awesome advice.

So good, in fact, that I sometimes think: "I should write that down."  And this morning it occurred to me that I have the perfect forum to do so, here in this occasional blog.

So here is a piece of advice I gave a dear friend last night.  This one is for the single ladies and mens.  (Sorry about the link, that song is just stuck in my head).

I know well that feeling of "This person is meant to be my partner."  It's a legitimate phenomenon (yes, I actually talk like this).

However that 'meant to be' feeling has no bearing on how many nights you will go to bed without crying, how many meals you will eat in happy togetherness, how many hikes you will go on, concerts you'll listen to, explorations you will have, how many peaceable days and supportive afternoons.  It has nothing to do with how many years you will be together, with how few fights.  'Meant to be' doesn't predict shared values or everyday compatibility.

In the reality of partnership, it is those things that matter.  "Meant to be" exists, but it runs on a separate, independent track.  So notice it and allow it, but don't confuse it for the real thing.

Trillium at San Pedro Valley Park

WHEN the wild things are

Today I saw fiddlenecks thrusting their curling orange smiles up at the world, so I decided to make a dated list of the wildflowers as I start seeing them.  This will also help me stay up-to-date on my botany, which I am losing through disuse, and hopefully make you jealous enough that you go out and take a hike, if you do not do so already.  Every time I see something new bringing in Spring and then Summer, I'll put it at the end of the list.  After some thought, I will include tree flowers, because I love them so much, and weeds, because I always notice them, but these will be marked with an I.

So, to date and with no particular date, I've seen:

Cynoglossum officionale - Houndstongue
Cardimine californica - Milkmaids
Escholzia californica - California poppy
Umbellularia californica - California Bay Laurel
Manzanita sp. - Manzanita
Acacia sp - Acacia (I)
Erodium sp - Storksbill (I)
Cherry and /or peach and/or nut blossoming trees; I can't tell them apart but those heavenly pink flowers and sweet nectar smells are some of my favorite harbingers of spring.  I'm sure I've seen more, but this is all I can think of right now.

2/21/2011
Raphanus sativus - Wild Mustard (I)
Brassica nigra - Black mustard (I)
Amsinckia menziesii var. intermedia - Intermediate Fiddleneck


Have you hiked lately?  What have you seen?

One from the archives (almost)

Well, so, this blog needs to decide what it's going to be.  The last time I kept a blog, it had a firm identity.  It was about garbage and love, two very compelling issues to me.  But then again, that blog got to be over a thousand pages, self absorbed and rambly, and it was just overwhelming.

This blog, now, it's not sure.  Is it about quitting smoking?  Nature?  What's the whole science angle?  How often will it get posts?  How much of those will be original writing?  Will it even keep going?

Good questions, all.  I guess only time will tell.  Sorry if it's too random.

This is almost a poem from the archives, except that it never even made it into the archives.  I was just tidying my room and I found it in a tiny notebook.  I remember scrawling it hastily (hasty scrawling is just about the only way I write poems) while on a hike.  It was late summer 2009, and we still lived in Davis.

THE GREEN AND THE GOLD

I would wait for rain forever

in this summer-spelled

breath-held

fire-starter season.

As long as the breeze keeps coming
to keep the flesh from split-scorching off my frame

I’ll wait -

a windborne hovered thought

a thistle seed caught.

Aloft in the currents 

between finding a way to land

and grabbing all the joy I can fit in my hands.

Balance.  Sure.  I know.

But this has always been my song. 

Keep away the winter, make summer last, everlong. 

I'm in love with summer, also the cleft in the seasons,

time held in between things, leaf madness on breezes.

I'm in love with more than this space in the fall,

but with the green and gold hunt for having it all.  

©m.sachs.martin

In Which I Am Not Rumi But Neither Again Do I Care

Paperwhites bloom,

Send scent saying “awaken!

Life is too short to hide in a haze. 

Put down your addictions

Your sadness, fatigue.

Come forth, come toward, to Spring.”

Crankyhike, whistle, and sing.

Somewhere between one every 5 times and one every 100 times I have a CRANKYHIKE.  I made up that term today and it fits just right.

Hiking is mostly very good, often great, and sometimes glorious, but looking back on the helpful record provided by this blog, I see I had a crankyhike on December 19th, and I had one again, today.

In the crankyhike, any one of the following, and probably more than one, will happen: 

I wake up late, can't decide where to go, get stuck on email or downloading music, finally get out the door when the day is half gone, get lost on the way there, don't bring the right clothes, something is wrong with my sandwich, I drink all my water too fast, I get lost on the trail, I fall, I don't see any cool animals.

Today it was the first 5 and the second to the last.  Fortunately the sandwich was fine and I saw a bunch of turkeys.  

But what defines crankyhike isn't anything that happens; actually those things often happen during lovely hikes, too.  It's my brain.  A typical crankyhike minute will pass something like this.  

Step.  I'm tired.  Step.  I'm so tired.  Step.  My back hurts.  Step.  My thighs are rubbing together.  Step.  I'm fat.  Step.  I'm really tired.  Step.  What's wrong with me?  I should be appreciating the day.  Step.  That's a pretty tree...  Step.  I'm hungry.  Step.  My back hurts, and onwards.

I just get stuck in this yukky loop of being unhappy, and then being unhappy about how unhappy I am.  The Buddhists say that pain is inevitable but suffering (pain about your pain) is optional.  Clearly, I just need to bring a Buddhist along when I'm having a crankyhike and then it'll all be cool. 

So today I had a crankyhike for sure, and then I got lost out there, and caught out after dark, which often happens, and then I got scared which does not usually happen.

I started hiking regularly maybe ten years ago?  I don't even remember how long, but Jen Johnson can confirm, because it was with her.  After several years of being hiking buddies, she got pregnant with my absolutely wonderful UGK (Unofficial Godkid) Benjamin, and I continued hiking alone.  Nowadays I can laugh when I look at the tree limb at Ed Levin just about a mile from the parking lot that I was convinced was a mountain lion, but the day I spent half an hour in front of it trying to force myself to keep walking, it was no joke.  Fear, once my constant companion on hikes, only visits me rarely these days.  I guess ten hikes happened without incident, and then a hundred, and somewhere my little mammal brain realized that Traumatic Things happen very rarely, if ever, on hikes.  But tonight, I got spooked.

Now, here is the nice part.  Generally, when I get spooked on a hike, it is about the idea of mountain lions.  So the solution is to whistle and sing.  I remember singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" while caught WAY the hell out at the Pinnacles; I must have gone through the song about 70 times before I finally got back to my car at 10 PM.

So tonight I started to sing.  I'm not some kind of opera singer, but I do love singing, and especially making up harmonies.  And while smoking, my singing would always collapse into coughing, or funny mid-word gasps for air.  But tonight a month after quitting, I was able - mildly - to let it rip, to let my little voice arc up and bounce around in the hills.

There's nothing like singing when you are scared, or for that matter, feeling like a crankypants.  I felt my mood start to raise from my feet, hover at my knees, and then slowly bubble upwards as I went through my repertoire.  After the first song, I wasn't even afraid, not really, but kept singing so as to stay that way.

Here are the songs I sing when I'm scared in the woods, in no particular order.  I'm linking them to the actual song, in case you are feeling crappy, they should help. 

Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine

John Prine - Angel from Montgomery

Celia Cruz - Yerberito Moderno

Louis Armstrong - Wonderful World

James Taylor - Close Your Eyes

Juan Luis Guerra - Los Pajaritos

and, of course, 

The Tokens - The Lion Sleeps Tonight

When I go through those songs, I try some other ones, or just start again at the beginning.

Then I came home and ate Sees Candy and took a nap, and now we are basically all good.

What do you do when you are scared?  How does it help?

FINALLY THE BEES

Bees!  Geez!  I'm sorry it took so long!

I'm on an excellent listserve run by CNPS called Gardening With Natives.  At times, like when I was preparing for the Green Gardening classes, I pay close attention and ask lots of questions.  Other times I just like to skim through posts, see what plants people are talking about.

All photos in this post are copyright 2010 or 2011 Little M Photos

So the other day there was some discussion of bees, and this lady, Gretchen, posted this awesome kind of rant about bees.  So I asked her if I could re-post what she said, and then asked my cousin if she had bee photos, which of course, she does ("well this is a crapload o bees huh. let me know what you think mamasita, i love you.")

So now I'm going to put the two sources together and here we go.  Everything in quotes is by Gretchen:  Director Great Sunflower Project, and Associate Professor of Biology, San Francisco State University.  All the photos are by my cousin.


"...clarify a bit about our San Francisco bumble bees. Most of the species are ground nesters and use old rodent (or other pre-formed holes) in the ground. Some will also use what are called cavity nests or nests in wood. I've seen our dominant bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii nest in the wall of a building as well as a bluebird box that I put up. "

We looked up this kind of bee when I visited my cousin.
It's native to California, and it's called a Sweat Bee.

"The life cycle of a bumble bee goes like this: a mated queen emerges in the spring, she establishes a nest and gathers food for her first set of larvae, once those larvae become adults (workers), the queen just becomes an egg-layer and stops leaving the hive, much like a honey bee queen." 

You can buy some of LittleM's photos at her Store.
If you agree with me that she should add more items to it, say so in the comments.

"The number of workers in the colony increases all summer until the queen produces her last brood which will have males and new queens. Both the males and the new queens fly in and out of the nest on feeding and mating flights and the new queen mates during these fall flights." 

Mmmmm, pollen!

"The new queens will dig shallow nests for overwintering and go into hibernation. The old queen, all the workers and the males all die as winter gets cold and resources diminish. Then, the cycle begins again with the new queen emerging and looking for a place to start a nest. Old nest sites don't get re-used."

Leaf cutter bee - caught in the act!!!!

"Bumble bees are considered social though their social system is much less complicated than a honey bee. You do hear them referred to as solitary bees but that is technically incorrect."




So the point of this discussion, which I possibly should have mentioned first (This is Miriam again) is that people were talking about native California bees, and how many of them are ground dwellers.  Then there had to be a discussion on that; it's a listserve, everyone argues constantly, and then Gretchen jumped in as you see above.  


But so the consensus, and the truth of the matter, is that various native California bees DO occupy leaf-litter, above-ground, and below-ground areas.  This is an important consideration when gardening; aseptic-type gardens, where all the leaves are blown and all the ground is either turf, fertilized, asphalt, or otherwise controlled, is NOT good for our native bees!

Please leave me some neutral space in your gardens, ok people?  Thanks!

So please be sure to designate some neutral spaces in your garden; spaces where the ground is not worked in any way - this includes not covering it with mulch.    Just leave it open, empty, bare and natural for the bees!  You can also make or buy bee blocks! Other considerations include planting bee-friendly native California plants, minimizing or eliminating chemical pesticides, and planting to ensure nectar/food source all year long.

If you are interested in learning more about native bees, here is a great article: Alternative Pollinators: Native Bees.  Also, Urban Bee Gardens is a cool site out of Berkeley.  Or just Google "native California bees" or "Gardening native California pollinators" and see what you get. 

That's the buzz!