Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Thurs 06.25.09 - A horse chestnut flowering in Hyde Park.

I will be on an airplane flying from Los Angeles to Stuttgart, Germany, most likely somewhere over northern Canada when the official summer solstice occurs tonight 10:45pm PDT (5:45am UTC), which is highly appropriate to be in a northern clime during the actually time of "sun-standing".

Here is a cool chart from the US Navy on the relative length of longest day and longest night depending on your latitude: If you live just a bit north of Los Angeles at 35N, then today/tomorrow will have 14 hours and 31 minutes of sun, but if you live in Helsinki or Anchorage at 60N, then you will have 18 hours and 53 minutes of sun (providing it is not cloudy, so I should say daylight)!

If you belong to a good old fashioned Sun based religion, enjoy your day and evening... Happy Midsummer!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 05.22.09 - Night heron on the pond's edge at the Rainbow Lanai. We are having a last hurrah breakfast before going to the airport.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Mon 05.04.09 - One the best parts of the Long Beach Marina Farmer's Market in the spring and early summer is that the flower vendor has sweet peas. Not only are they lovely, but they smell like honey.

Wed 04.22.09 - I love the comic, Bizarro. Most of the time it is very bizarre, as the name would lead one to believe, but every so often it is true genius, like today's commentary on Homo Sapiens - the uppity cousins.

Happy Earth Day!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Tues 04.14.09 - One of the neighbors has a Buddha's Hand Citron tree on the edge of their yard. And I photographed the two citrons that were big and lovely whilst walking home with Les Doggies.

Photo by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Happy Easter!

Sat 04.04.09 - More photos on this tomorrow, when I don't have a funky headache.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen at Chiraco Summit with a Nokia N79.

Every butterfly and its brother must have been migrating today across the desert today. As I was driving home from Arizona about 15 miles before Desert Center on Hwy. 177 until Chiriaco Summit (about 34 miles in total) on I-10, waves and waves of butterflies were flying low across the roads and highways.

It was beautiful and sad. Beautiful to see hundreds and thousands of butterflies all at once. Sad to see so many meet their deaths on the grill of my car.

Sat. 03.21.09 - Local mourning dove decides to nest and raise youngins in a cactus filled window box.

I hope all is well, but I am concerned about you.

March, I hate to break this to you, but you seem to be confused this year. I know that you know this and I know that I know this, and so do the other 16 million folk who have lived in SoCal for longer than a couple of years, but ...

March, June Gloom is *supposed* start in June, or mid-May at earliest. Please tell the fog and inversion layer to go away. Yes, go away.

March, you, along with February, are the two months that I brag about to non-SoCal folks. Both of you are usually delightful and glorious, warm-ish, sunny, with a few storms that rumble quickly through and leave the mountains draped in white, which is stark contrast to the same two months in many other places in the northern hemisphere.

March, don't let me down. Please either tell the clouds to rain or to go away.

Thanks, jen ;o)

Happy New Year to all the folks who celebrate it on the Equinox!

All Colbert snarkiness aside, President Obama has given a Norouz address, and here is the wikipedia article on Nowruz.

New Year used to be celebrated at the spring equinox in Europe but it was changed over to January 1 by the Romans and finalized in various other cultures of Europe by the 1700s. Given how many of our holidays have their roots in the agricultural calendar of neolithic Eurasia and pre-Roman Europe, I would prefer that our New Year was celebrated with the advent of spring rather than an arbitrary date picked by Rome. Besides, spring is much more naturally festive than January in the northern hemisphere.

Happy New Year!

Sat 02.28.09 - My Mom and I decided to drive up and explore Lake Havasu City to combat "cabin fever" this afternoon, as we drove north on the Arizona Hwy. 95, I decided to stop at the Bill Williams Wildlife Reserve "scenic view" spot for photos. Scenic it was.

All photos taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia N95 and stitched together with Fireworks.

Wed 02.18.09 - Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 while walking the dogs.

Thur 02.12.09 - Or the Nokia N95 is back in action.

Sat 02.07.09 - Plus the nearly full moon rising, as a bonus to today's amazing turnaround from pouring rain this morning to very gorgeous this afternoon.

This week when the press was nattering on in headlines about Michael Phelps getting caught smoking a bong at a party, I thought, "Michael who?"

This shows you how much I pay attention to sports. It took me about 2 hours to remember that Mr. Phelps was an Olympic athlete. My next thought was, "Why does anyone care if he smokes pot? Isn't he like 22?"

I would be more concerned if he was shooting steroids to improve his athletic performance than smoking a drug that is known to make folks couch potatoes. Really, people, think of the headlines, "Famed Olympic Swimmer Caught on a 3am Run to Dunkin Donuts for a 24 Pack of Donut Holes." vs. a headline like "Famed American Male Swimmer Looking Oddly Like 1970s East German Women's Swimming Team."

While I do not like marijuana and I really don't care to be around anyone smoking it, as the smoke is a migraine headache trigger for me; and as the daughter of a parent who has smoked it for years, I don't tend not respect regular users, but... but... but...

Really, America, it is time to legalize and tax this stupid-making herb. If we allow Colt 45 to be sold at liquor stores and the state of California makes a tax off of it, then a dime bag of pot should also be sold and taxed.

Why do I think this? As long as this drug is illegal our prisons are full, our national parks are being raped by greedy drug farming capitalists, and we are losing tons of tax dollars to drug lords and cartels who are holding many cities north & south of the border hostage.

We have not set up Sequoia National Park to be a place for the Mexican Cartels to grow marijuana and trash the land, we set up Sequoia to preserve a unique biosphere on the western Sierras. When I first read in 2005 in the LA Times of the cartels slashing & burning oak forest to grow marijuana for the illegal drug trade, I was FURIOUS.

I was even more furious that the US government has known about this since at least 2003 (from the LA Times article), even though they chose to ignore it:

Sequoia Kings Canyon spokesperson Alexandra Picavet thinks the drug debate has kept the problem from getting traction. "People get blinded by the marijuana issue.... We don't want people planting asparagus on the land, either. This is agricultural assault on a national park, no matter what they're growing."

Lawmakers say the issue is crowded out by more pressing matters. This year's federal drug-control strategy did not address pot cultivation on public land. And the Sierra Club acknowledges other priorities than drug bandits.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), whose district includes Sequoia National Park, called hearings on the marijuana incursion in 2003. He says the issue is under the radar for most lawmakers in Washington.

"They don't even know that it exists.... People don't think about it," Nunes says.

The pot growers are no longer the stereotype of hapless hippies. They are part of sophisticated criminal organizations schooled on the Colombian cartels' economy of scale, says Ruzzamenti. "They do things big. Even if you lose a little here, you'll make it up in the long run. They've taken this lesson to another level," he says.

Most of the ringleaders, say investigators, are U.S. nationals based in Southern California with connections to cartel families in Michoacán, Mexico; field workers are well-armed Mexican laborers.

"We've found AR-15s, shotguns, rifles, knives strapped to poles, crude crossbows," says J.D. Swed, chief ranger at Sequoia.

It is high time that we allow American farmers to legally grown the herb - let's help set them free from Monsanto & Number 2 corn - and for the US & various states to make a little tax money. Let's make it cheap enough that there is no incentive for drug cartels to rape our national parks and to be involved at all.

If folks want to get high, let them. Tax the shit and then change the DUI laws to include both alcohol and marijuana influenced equally. Take the tax monies and place it into education and health care. We tax alcohol and cigarettes, let's tax the herb.

We need the money more than the drug cartels do. As for Mr. Phelps, we put him up on the hero pedestal, let's not knock him down off of it for anything less than steroid drug abuse that will effect why we put him on the pedestal in the first place.

Sun 01.25.09 - Spied a fiddlehead fern unfolding while out on a walk with the dogs. Photo taken with a Nokia N82 camera phone.

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.

Tues. 12.30.08 - The International Year of Astronomy 2009 - go out and truly watch the night sky. (Video via APOD.)

Tues 12.23.08 - The day in between storms.

Sun 12.21.08 - Today is the shortest day of the year, the start of winter, and starting tomorrow the light wins.

Sorry for the lack of words here the last few days, I have had a very stressful last week in work world, I have been fighting a cold for a good week and a half that has decided to revisit with a vengeance this weekend, and last but not least - after a delightful Friday of celebrating Thomas' joining the Land of the Free & Brave - yesterday I received a phone call that a friend who I have greatly admired for years was killed in a car accident on Friday. Thus, the last 24 hours has been very sad on top of tired & sick.

I truly hope that the light starts to shine tomorrow and into the next year.

Thurs 12.18.08 - The rain stopped sometime last night and I woke up to clear, sunny skies and snow low on all the mountains and local hills! Very exciting! The last time I have seen snow this low on the Irvine & Orange hills was in Nov. 2004 the day before Erika & I went to Ireland.

I couldn't just stay home in Seal Beach and natter way on images and slideshows on my computer, no, I had to go out at lunch time and drive up Santiago Canyon Road to take in the low snow line myself before it all melts away.

Truly a lovely day.

All photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 at Dog Beach, Huntington Beach.

Fri 12.12.08 - This afternoon at 3:16pm was an extra, extra low tide due to the Full Moon. Usually the low tides are 1 to 3 ft with high tides at 3 to 5 ft, today the low tide was -1.78 ft and the high tide was 7ft! Whole sections of beach that are normally underwater and the domain of surfers, stingrays, and halibut were dry land today. There were tons of baby clams at the surface opening and closing their little shells in wonderment of this air stuff rather than the normal ocean water.

The extra low tide was a blast for the dogs, as they had a lot of flat hard sand to run on. We arrived at 3:10pm and did not depart until sunset around 4:45pm. It was a lot of fun.

Sat. Dec. 6, 2008 - On our way back from the Caribbean Christmas concert at CSULB, my Mom noted that tonight's sunset would be good. When we got back, we collected Scruffy and walked over to the beach to see the sunset. We walked up to the top of the winter berm and the sunset was amazing!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 in Seal Beach, CA.

Mon Dec 1, 2008 - Or maybe it is a convergence of the crescent moon, Venus, and Jupiter. Regardless the southwestern sky during dusk has been beautiful the last two evenings.

Sat 11.15.08 - Santa Ana Winds + Fire = Fire Season

Thurs 09.11.08 - Best sunrise I ever seen, mind you I try to avoid them, but this had an amazing range of reds.

Photo taken today on a Finnair flight over the Baltic on the way to Helsinki.

Fri 08.22.08 - Ryan staked Bird's sunflowers last weekend as they were falling over. Soon the seeds will be harvested, then soaked in salt brine, then roasted, and then we can eat them.

File under odd but True: This summer at least once a week we have had June Gloom (maritime inversion layer clouds) until 10am or noon. Usually, from July 4th to October or November, we are cloud free. The days we have the inversion clouds it makes photography difficult.

Tues 08.19.08 - This morning, rather than going to take boxes to my storage room, Mom and I took Scruffy to Dog Beach. Scruffy, at the end of our walk, found a seagull feather to bring along.

Fri 08.15.08 - Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 at Dog Beach, Huntington Beach, Calif.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 at Dog Beach.

Wed 07.16.08 - After Scruffy's vet appointment today, I treated Scruffy to a walk at Dog Beach. As he ran along, I walked looking for photos. For the first time ever, I came across a shell that still had its animal in it (the "pod" as in foot, still attached).

I poked the pod lightly and it did not retract the pod, so I assumed it was dead. Also, this is the first time I have seen this style of shell on the beach. In shell shops yes, in the tropics yes, but on a beach in Southern California being washed up by the high tide? No.

To memorialize our friend the fairly long traveled shell, here is your photo with a piece of seaweed.

Tues 07.15.08 - Scruffy, Belle, and I met David and his human while walking today. Scruffy and Belle barked at David, David screached back at them. I am not an interspecies translator, so I don't know what they were talking about... ;o)

Sat 07.12.08 - As seen at the local garden center.

Fri 07.11.08 - Actually these were "Late Afternoon Glories".

Wed 07.02.08 - More on the opening of the weekly farm box over at the Happy Tastebud.

In the Fervor to be Green and Do Your bit to Stop Climate Change Morality Play that is Contemporary Life (or how to be a good little Green who will go to Arcadia when you Die), the BBC has published an article today on "The Bulb Hoarders". Horrors.

"The government (UK) wants your old-fashioned energy-hungry incandescent tungsten light bulb gone, and gone soon. But some people are willing to go to great lengths to hang onto the lights they love.

Incandescent bulbs - that's the traditional kind to you or me - waste 95% of the energy they use, according to Greenpeace. They calculate that phasing them out in the UK will save more than five million tonnes in CO2 emissions a year.

And yet some households are so attached to them that they not only keep buying them - they're stockpiling them ahead of the day when they're no longer available.

In September last year, the UK government made a deal with major shops for the supply of traditional bulbs to be turned off. Some higher energy bulbs will be gone by January 2009, and all incandescent lights will be off by 2011.

The agreement is voluntary, but other countries have announced legal bans, including Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the US. "

Ok, so the British government has legislated that CFL bulbs are to be sold and that energy hogging incandescent bulbs are to be banned and taken off the shelf. Sounds reasonable right? ((cough cough cough...nanny state... cough cough cough))

But isn't life a give and take? Many of the folks interviewed for the BBC article and who commented think so.

Everybody has at least one, even if they will never admit to it. Some people have a lot more than one. Most of them are mild and not to life altering or disturbing, but sometimes they can stop life its place.

I am talking about phobias.

I have two phobias: Acrophobia and Parasitophobia.

My fear of heights is not too bad, just an occasional bout of vertigo if I am too close to a ledge or walking across a narrow bridge. I still can ski (go on ski lifts) and rock climb (with harnass & rope) without too much trouble, although bouldering does give me the creeps if I have to leap across a chasm of more than 8 inches.

Basically, I just force myself to just do it and then when I am past the height part, I am fine. Heights do not haunt me. Though, due to my acrophobia, I will not parachute, jump out of a plane, hang glide off a cliff, or bungee jump.

But parasites, well that is another story.

Tues 06.24.08 - Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains as seen while driving south on Hwy 395 between Big Pine and Independence, Calif. The smoke was from two fires in Mariposa County (Yosemite area) and one fire in eastern Sequoia (Tulare County).

Tues 06.24.08 - Wild Irises as seen in a little meadow on the side of the Bishop Creek outlet pond just downhill from Aspendell on Hwy. 168.

Tues 06.24.08 - Looking up Hwy 168 towards Jawbone Canyon and the road to Lake Sabrina as we turn left to go to the little outlet pond on Bishop Creek just below Aspendale.

Sun 06.22.08 - 4:09 pm - Have hat, will hike. ;o)

Sat 06.21.08 - 3:31pm - I couldn't stand staying within 10 miles of Lake Tahoe and not going to see it & dip my toes in the lake.

According to the nice folk at the US Navy Observatory, today, June 20, 2008 at 23:59 UT will be the Summer Solstice.

To most North Americans, this is the day we mark as the start of Summer. When I was in Ireland, May 1st was the first day of Summer and today would be considered the high point of Summer. Where ever you are north of the equator and whenever you start your Summer, Happy Longest Day of the Year!

Enjoy it as you will. I will be driving to Lake Tahoe for CampCamp 5.0. I should be on the Interstate 5 driving north at 4:59pm Pacific Daylight Time.

Thurs 06.19.08 - The Bird of Paradise Tree, as seen on Central Street during my morning walk with Scruffy.

All photos taken at the CARMA Radio Telescope Array by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 camera phone.

Sat. 06.14.08 - The Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) Radio Telescopes (aka The Ears) in the White Mountains had their annual Open House today. My Mom and I have been wanting to go to The Ears' open house for a couple of years now and today it worked out.

It was a blast. I love all things astronomy and this radio telescope array up at 7,000 ft plus was a true delight, both from the scientific curiosity perspective and then it was just aesthetically lovely perspective. A real treat.

Fri 06.13.08 - As seen in my brother's backyard this afternoon.

Tue 06.03.08 - Here is a photo from this morning's walk on the greenbelt of my favorite local tree in dappled light. It is a fairly young sycamore (plane tree, for the Brits), probably less than 20 to 40 years old, but already trifurcated and growing in bendy, lovely directions. It will be a glorious tree in 80 - 120 years from now, much like the Wedding Lawn Sycamores at my Uncle John's house or the Sycamores that line Santiago Creek at Irvine Regional Park.

I wanted to spend the time to blog about the Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom food photo / blogging contest and voting that is going on right now, but I had a long day working on deadline and a very frustrating evening. So, click on the link to Food 2.0 above to vote on the best of the photos & blogging and I will make the blog post tomorrow when I am in a better mood.

Thur 05.29.08 - Alongside the beach bike path between Dog Beach and Bolsa Chica State Park.

Thur 05.29.08 - As seen at Dog Beach in Huntington this afternoon. Gorgeous.

Wed 05.28.08 - As planted by me yesterday and today.

Tues 05.27.08 - Morning vs. evening...

Tue 05.27.08 - The extra-late winter storm moved on and today was clear and beautiful all day long. I could see and count 13 oil tankers & container ships within a couple of miles of shore. More oil tankers than I have seen in a long time off the coast of Long Beach, waiting for their turn at the Port. Hmmm...

Fri 05.23.08 - Othewise entitled "Winter Storm in Late May".

The light streaming into my apartment this morning with the cold wind that was making my curtains billow was not the bright light and warm winds of May or even the dull, clouded light of early June gloom, but instead this morning was the completely out of season winter storm continued its assault on the whole of the West Coast (from BC to Baja), as well as the Western States.

The light this morning was intense with a bright gray light streaming in and the curtains puffed out with chilly wind. Now it is Friday evening and I can't walk the dogs for the rain.

If you live in a wet place, this is not strange. But SoCal is on the edge of the desert. We are a "Mediterranean Climate" in the best of years or a "Semi-Arid" climate in the worst of years. In the best of years the rainy season starts in late Oct. or early Nov. and lasts until March or April, in the worst of years we are lucky to get rain in Feb. & March. Coastal SoCal (within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean) does not receive the "North American Monsoon" rains in the late summer that Arizona and New Mexico receive. To get rain, real rain, not sprinkles from the inversion layer clouds, anytime from May all the way to Oct. is a very rare event and considered strange.

The last two days with near gale force winds, rain, and chilly weather in late May have been strange. This is weather we expect Dec - Feb, not months later.

Odd, but welcomed. When you live on the edge of a big desert, any rain is welcome.

Thurs 05.22.08 - Local house sparrow gets nosy and watches Scruffy intently.

Sat 05.18.08 - The first Geekyoto at Conway Hall in Holburn, London.

Sorry the photo is slightly blurry, but I was trying to get a photo of Ben jokingly doing jumping jacks without the Nokia's flash on.

All photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 in and around Seal Beach, Calif., on Sat. 05.03.08.

Mon 04.07.08 - Local tree looses most of its white blossoms in favor of light green leaves. News at 11.

Thur 04.03.08 - Walking in Aspendell.

Thur 04.03.08 - The grape arbor in my Mom's front yard.

First Spring Poppies taken on Tues. 03.18.08 by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Happy First Day of Spring! Happy New Year to the folks who celebrate the New Year with the beginning of Spring! While the technical vernal equinox was this morning at 5:48 am (GMT), the start of spring at 9:48pm last night for the Pacific zone.

Sat. 03.08.08 - SXSW Day 1 - I watch this tree, at the SW corner of 3rd & Trinity Sts in Austin, bloom and start to leaf out every year since 1998. It is fun to see its yearly show.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen on Thurs. Feb. 14, 2008,
in the Kerala backwaters with a Nokia N82.

Zanzara... the word sounds so exotic, doesn't it? It is a Italian word for an insect and the when you say zanzara is is somewhat descriptive to how the insect sounds when it flies real close to your ear. zzzz zzzz zzzz.

The Aussies use the word mozzie. In English, we say mosquito. I call them, "Why, you little f*^kers!" as I attempt to eradicate them from the vicinity.

After getting my vaccinations for India, I was not allowed out of the Kaiser Permanente building without a prescription for malaria pills. All of the Brits and Europeans I have spoken to so far here in India, were given all the same shots by their health care folk but were told they didn't need the malaria pills. huh. I'd rather be safe than sorry.

During the Kerala Backwaters boat tour today, Grazyna noted that I did not have any mosquito bites on my legs or feet, whereas her bites had bites. I asked if she had taken the following precautions that I have learned over the years:

How to prevent or at least reduce getting bit by mosquitoes:
1) Stay somewhere with screens on the windows or in an AC room.

2) When in mosquito country, only use unscented soap or shower gel. Mosquitoes primary job in life is to be plant pollinators, only the females bite when breeding. So, don't walk around smelling like a flower or a fruit.

3) Sub-corollary: Don't wear perfume in mosquito country, esp. if you are me and all your perfume is rose & gardenia scents.

4) Wash your feet well with unscented soap twice a day. One of the widespread mosquitoes around the world loves all things stinky, esp. foot smell, and will only bite your feet. So instead of wondering why only your feet got bitten, wash 'em.

5) Use an insect repellent with at least 50% deet. Spray it everywhere, including on your clothes.

While my arms, legs and feet were bite free on Thursday, my butt was not. Yes, people, I neglected to spray the deet repellent on my capri pants and they were thin enough for the mosquitoes to bite me on the backside. I may have an itchy backside, but I did take my malaria pill on time yesterday... ;o)

Fri 02.01.08 - Took them 6 months. Video of "House Finch Merry Go Round".

Mon 01.28.08 - at Phó 79 in Garden Grove, Calif.

Wed. 12/15/07 - 7:20am (PST) - A big storm north of Hawaii has created some lovely waves for the coast of California with Mavericks and Pebble Beach up North getting the BIG waves, but here in SoCal Seal Beach and Sunset Beach were the best positioned for the waves (LA beaches in the lee of the Channel Islands).

Last night at 10pm was the peak of the swell, but this morning was the last of the big waves, so out we went to watch. Most of the swells and waves hitting Seal Beach south of the pier were between 8-12 ft with an occasional peak at 14-16ft. Due to the beach and ocean floor, most of the waves were shore breaks, bad for surfers but decent for the body boarders.

A crowd of hundreds sat or stood up on the sand berm watching about 100 plus surfers and body boards attempt to catch a ride. It was mayhem, waves changing direction, sand bars causing them to gain or lose height at odd times, and too many surfers out on top of each other.

All photos & video taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95. Flickr photo set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/msjen/sets/72157603381800174/

****
From the surf forecast reports:

Surfline calls today's swell: "Epic". (Ms. Jen says: Not quite epic for No. OC)

Pacific Storm & Surf Forecast says:

On Tuesday (12/4) Northern CA surf was 6 times overhead with washing machine conditions and fog with light wind. South facing breaks in Santa Cruz were triple overhead and somewhat warbled with fog. Central California surf (Morro Bay) was double overhead and on the way up. Surf in Southern CA from Santa Barbara to just north of LA was up to 1-3 ft overhead early and building steadily.The LA Area southward to Orange County was chest high and clean. South Orange County down into San Diego best breaks were chest to head high and building. The North Shore of Oahu was double overhead, maybe a bit more. The South Shore had locally generated windswell. The East Shore has surf to 4 ft overhead at select breaks.



North/Central California was getting pummeled by the meat of Swell #9, even at protected breaks. An epic Mavericks sessions was reported in the afternoon with supposedly 60 ft sheet glass faces ridden by paddle-in surfers. On a sadder note there was reportedly a death at Ghost Tree. Southern California was getting fun sized preliminary energy from Swell #9, but the real core of the swell was still 8 hours off. Hawaii's North Shore was starting to settle dow a little with the trailing edge of Swell #9 in effect, but down considerably from Monday evenings ragged peak. The big story remains Swell #9, with much size still poised off the California coast and taking aim on Southern CA next. A downward trend is forecast starting Wednesday, but a pair of gales are scheduled to develop, one just north of Hawaii pushing south almost over the Islands mid-week and another off the Central CA coast late in the week setting up raw proto-swell in both locations. After that a much calmer pattern is expected over the entire North Pacific, so get it while it's here. But be safe, especially in regards to Swell #9. See details below...

(Ms. Jen says: 60ft at Mavericks? Now that is Epic.)

Photos of these two trees taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Satellite photo of Southern California taken by NASA on Mon. Oct. 22, 2007 at 2:50pm (PDT).

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is that season again. While it may be autumn in the rest of the northern hemisphere, it is Fire Season here in gritty, smoky, Southern California.

Add one part super dry land due to the driest year on record
Add one part Santa Ana winds
Add one part arson or human error or a downed power line
And within the course of 24 hours one can have 12 fires, count 'em 12, in Southern California!

The LA Times has made a Google Fire map with a current listing of the fires. The nice folks over at the Earth Observatory have once again provided a 2 times daily satellite shot of SoCal in all of its smoke plumed glory. Waiting for the FireMapper folks to get their aircraft up, so that they can document the current round of fires.

While the air quality is quite low here in Seal / Long Beach area, it is nothing like the folks up in the Castaic area or in San Diego where 250,000 folks are being evacuated.

If you are not in a fire zone or being evacuated, the authorities are asking folks to stay inside due to air quality and keep cell / mobile phone usage down as to be able to free up the networks for emergency work.

Seeing the bald eagle sitting on top of a lamp post on the Pacific Coast Highway bridge between Dover Shores and Corona del Mar in Newport Beach.

Really. A real live bald eagle. Watching the water.

Yeah.

Sun 07.22.07 - While walking Scruffy, I wanted to see how well the N95 would take close-ups in the hard shade. The local cactus obliged.

Thurs. 07.19.07 - This afternoon Mom, Margaret & Billy Gubbins, Scruffy and I went on a small hike up the Rock Creek trail. The wildflowers were out, Rock Creek was full of water (unlike the streams and creeks at Yosemite and Sequoia National parks), the day was warm, and we went to lunch at Tom's Place afterwards.

Tues 07.17.07 - At the Giant Forest Grove in the Sequoia National Park, plus various other photos from today.

I have never seen a nopal or prickly pear cactus have so much fruit that the cactus paddles are bending down.

Sun. 05.13.07 - After a lovely Mother's Day lunch at Grandma Grace's with my Mom, Allison, Aunt Anne, Aunt Dana, and Grandma, I met up with Erika for a hike around the Bolsa Chica Wetlands to clear out the brain and tummy. Lovely day, lovely walk, until I had a gravity storm on a levy when some gravel slipped, I slipped, I tumbled end over end and luckily did not end up in the muck of the lagoon. I do have lots of scrapes.

Quite a few bird photographers were out and about at the bird bridge with outrageously large lenses. I have one small Nokia N80 camera phone and it did a fine job of snapping the birds and wetlands. Makes one wonder what the gianormous lenses for? PEL, anyone?

For at least 2 years now there have been murmurs of honey bee deaths. Before I went to Ireland in fall of 2005, there were bits and bobs in the press about honey bees being afflicted with mites. Now the press is speaking of wholesale honey bee deaths and hive collapse. This is a big problem since 1/3 or more of our food is directly pollinated by honey bees.

I take a walk every day. I take my camera. I watch, observe and take photos. Here are the observations of one woman who walks. Bees are dying.

Sat. 02. 17.07 - All photos taken by Ms. Jen at Bolsa Chica Wetlands with her Nokia N80. More photos were taken with her Nikon FM3a, but those photos are pending film processing, et al. ;o)

My brother Joe decided it was time to get the garden cleaned up. He asked his gardener to come back today and take everything, todo, out of the front planter except the cactus and the two rose bushes that I planted in 1999. All done. Very naked.

Yes, it is my favorite holiday of the year today.... Groundhog's Day or St. Brigid's Day (yesterday)!

Phil's prediction for 2007:

Phil Says Spring is Right Around the Corner!

Phil's official forecast as read 2/2/07 at 7:28 a.m. at Gobbler's Knob:

El Nino has caused high winds, heavy snow, ice and freezing temperatures in the west.
Here in the East with much mild winter weather we have been blessed.

Global warming has caused a great debate.
This mild winter makes it seem just great.

On this Groundhog Day we think of one thing.
Will we have winter or will we have spring?

On Gobbler's Knob I see no shadow today.
I predict that early spring is on the way.

The Northwest and Northern California may have seen a heavy, wet, and cold winter this year, but here in SoCal we have only had one good rain in October and one last week. SoCal has been very dry and quite warm, until the January cold snap. Phil - we need rain. Will you please do a dance for SoCal today?

In other notes, congratulations to the Brigidine Sisters on their bicentennial anniversary this year! May you keep the fires of St. Brigid lit, may your compassion and peace go before you!

Driving south on the US 395 between Big Pine and Independence, the whole of the "Big Boys" of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (the 12,000 - 14,000 footers) were completely covered in clouds and obscured by falling snow. Other than a few raindrops, we had no problems driving home.

At Ranch 99 Market.

For many of us caught up in Hannukah (Happy Hannukah!) or Christmas preparations or figuring out how to squeeze out a few more days of holiday time or going to pick up more heart meds or a martini after negotiating the mall parking lot, we quite often let a very special day pass by us. But if you are SAD, it is today is the day to celebrate!

Yes, it is that time of the year again, Mr. Sun* will start showing his face around the Northern Hemisphere a little bit more each day after Dec. 22, 2006 at 00:22 UT (aka 12:22am GMT) or for those on the West Coast of North America that means today, Dec. 21, 2006 at 4:22pm. Happy Winter Solstice!

Regardless of your religious persuasion, be it Jewish, Christian, Consumerian, Buddhist, Republican, Aetheist, or Scientific, here are a few links to help you get in the spirit of the shortest day of year, go out and celebrate with good cheer:

Wikipedia on the Solstice(s)

Equinoxes and solstices

Common Holidays in Relation to Equinoxes, Solstices & Cross-Quarter Days

Ancient Origins: Solstice

Trapping Christmas

Bonsai at the Huntington Gardens.

Local rose has gone all hippy, seen whilst walking the dogs.

Mom and I met up for a late afternoon walk at Bolsa Chica wetlands.

As my mom and I were driving southbound on the US 395 near Owens Lake, California, the sky in front of us was dark gray with thunder clouds and lightning was flashing through the sky and clouds. I was unable to take any digital stills as we were driving, but was able to take a 5 minute video and capture lightning in the 3rd or 4th minute.

Filmed / Video'd with a Nokia N80 camera phone by Jenifer Hanen on Fri. Oct. 13, 2006 near Olancha, California.

Mon. Sept. 4, 2006 - The Grange Stone Circle, Co. Limerick, Ireland

Fri 08.18.06 - After dropping my laundry off, I stood by the coy / lily pond attempting to get a photo of the coy, but they were a bit too fast.

The legitmate garden variety, not the type that drops into a BlogHer panel unannounced.

Mon 07.24.06 - Irish Skies.

Tue 06.27.06 - The local 'water feature' blooms.

Message text

Tue 05.09.05 - The tree butchers continue. Can they harvest this grande dame for hardwood timber? What a waste to cut the trunk into sections and chip them...

Sat 05.06.06 - The big, old, but dead tree outside my window will be cut down on Monday by "tree surgeons".

Its a gorgeous Friday afternoon in St. Stephens Green, I take this photo, and then I hear, PLOP, and feel wet on my hair & left shoulder. I am now on the Luas to go take a shower. Damn pigeon in the tree above me.

Across from College Green at Trinity.

Mon 04/17/2006 11:15 - Lavender voilet-like flowers with yellow centers.

Mon 04/10/2006 10:13 : On the way to the Luas

Wed 04/05/2006 17:03 -

Tue 04/04/2006 18:23 - Having all the Mallard ducks around in the local ponds has led to inevitable Springtime results: baby ducks!

Wed 03/29/2006 12:56 - Local tree makes good.

Sun 01.08.05 - Bought at Marks & Spencers today as a treat for the post-holiday blues.

Fri 12.30.05 - Lone Pine Ridge at Irvine Regional Park.

Thur 12.29.05 - Orange, Calif.

Sun 12.25.05 - It is very windy and we are going to Narnia & not skiing.

Sun 12.25.05 - Merry Christmas!

Sat 12.24.05 - Skiing at Mammoth.

Sat 12.24.05 - When I was last in Mammoth, in Oct 2004, there was no cell connection at all with my carrier, today I have full bars & GPRS! Yeah.

Wed 12.07.05 - White puff balls on a bush... berries or spongy seed pods?

Turtles older than Harriet, by some.

Happy Birthday to Harriet! She is celebrating 175 years! Go tortoise Go!

Wed 11.09.05 - I have the day off today, as we are split up into groups for Video Week and my group does not have any classes today. Wahoo!

Here are the things I have discovered on my day off. Sleep is good. Reading is even better. The blind in my window is not fully opaque buy when the sunshines through it you can see things that are4 taller than the window up through the fabric of the blind. The ethernet connection is slow slow slow slow today, about 519 kbs. I guess I should get out and take a walk in the sun, or something...

Day 2 with Linux is only going ok. I tried to install Skype, but my Ubuntu package updater is not updating anything. At all. It keeps giving me errors. I need to google the errors to figure out what is up, but the internet is driving me mad.

Good thing my cameraphone is moblogging happily today.

This Not So Itsy Bitsy Spider*, who is hiding above the waterspout, scared the bejezus out of me the other evening when I was watering the yard. He played shy when I tried to snap his photo this afternoon.

*a.k.a Big Ass Black Spider with eerie green eyes, he/she is at least 1/2 inch wide and looks like a hermit crab who is using the garage as a shell.

Sun 07.10.05 - Nokias do not taste good.

Sun 07.10.05 - Two little piggies and one big mama at the OC Fair.

Mon 07.04.05 - The Huntington Beach generating station.

Sun 07.03.05 - A summer spider building a web between two roses and the fence.

It is June 20th. Summer starts late tonight (June 21, 2005 at 6:46 UT or 6:46am GMT, which is 11:46pm PDT on Mon. June 20th).

And... There is still a snow cap on Mt. Baldy!!!! It is been very clear and warm the last couple of days and that little hat of snow that Mt. Baldy is wearing is standing out on the northern horizon!

Usually the snow cap is history in mid-April or at the very latest early May! Late June! Hello! Go, snow, go!

Mon 06.13.05 - I walked out of my room this morning to find a dead female house finch right in the middle of the narrow walk way between my room / the bathroom and the living room / rest of the house.

Very odd. No cat. Scruffy is at Joe's. No doors open or widows without screens. Odd.

Photo Friday : Space

Mon. 05.09.05 - Freckles. Aged 13. Occupying space. Less space than in previous years.

Last night Heidi and I met at the Farmer's Market at 3rd & Fairfax in LA to have dinner and a good chat. Over 3 hours we caught up, cooked up a Heidi's Night Of Beauty at Alex's for July, and talked about life, the world, the entertainment industry, and development in the Central Valley of California.

While in college, many moons ago, painter Christine Anderson presented a visiting artist's lecture on her series of paintings on how suburbian track homes were overrunning America's best farm land. In the 15 years since, I have spent time thinking about and ranting about how Americans have a predilection for paving over any good bit of land.

A couple of years ago, while at breakfast, my brother Joe and I got into a discussion about how California needs to conserve its best farm land and not put up track housing over the land that feeds our nation plus many others. My brother stated that all we had to do was get our produce from Mexico.

Photo of the Double Delight and Midnight Blue roses taken on Mon. 05.09.05 with Ms. Jen's Nokia 7610.

Wed. 05.11.05 - After working in my driveway side another 4 hours today, I am almost done. I have all the plants and roses in that my mom and I got on April 25th. I have another 4 foot section of heinous tuber/rhizomes to dig out tomorrow morning and then I need to decide if I will get another rose bush or another salvia. Decisions...

Wed 05.04.05 - Trees. Construction equipment now lines the 22 fwy.

Sat. 04.30.05 - I joined Erika, Marti, and Joanna at the Huntington Library and Gardens in San Marino for tea. Afterwards we walked the gardens and I saw this heron hanging out next to a statue of St. Francis.

Other sights, left to right: folks feeding crackers to the coy, baby fish in the Japanese Garden coy pond, and a lovely eucalytus tree.

All the above photos taken with Ms. Jen's Casio Exlim-Z40

Photos from Tea and the Rose Garden, left to right: Ms. Jen and Ms. Marti, a lovely Rose, and Lara & Erika in the Rose Garden.

All the above photos taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia 7610

Plus my Flickr Photoset of the Cactus Garden.

Tue 04.25.05 -This morning as I was clearing and amending another 4 ft patch of ground, I found a horseshoe. When I finished the section, I put it back in to receive luck for my new roses & salvia.

Mon 04.24.05 - After 3 hours of garden related shopping and 2.5 hours of digging, soil amending, and planting, a third of the driveway side garden is done.

Mon 04.25.05 - Second stop of the garden tour is M&M Nursery.

Mon 04.25.05 - Second stop of the garden tour is M&M Nursery.

Mon 04.25.05 - For my birthday I asked my mom to give me a day. A day dedicated to gardening. Here is the before pic as we were leaving to start the day.

My NatGeo Genographic kit came in the mail today! Wahoo...

I found out about the Genographic in the LA Times last Wednesday, ordered my kit online that night, and it was in my mailbox today!

From the 4/13/05 LA Times article:

The National Geographic Society is launching a massive project today to trace the migratory history of humans, a five-year effort that will involve the collection and analysis of DNA from more than 100,000 people around the world.

"We already have a general view of the very early Paleolithic migrations," said geneticist Spencer Wells, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence who will lead the project. "Humans spread out of Africa, then moved out of Eurasia, but it gets very hazy after that. We're going to nail down the details of that story."

Sat 04.09.05 - Calif. Poppies amongst the wildflowers at the Reserve.

Sat 04.09.05 - Red-violet Owl Clover standing up in the daisies and pygmy lupine.

Mon. 03.14.05 - Gawker Party - The patio wall at the Side Bar had lovely ghost images of vines from days gone by.

Wed. 03.30.05 - The neighbor's garden from another angle.

Wed 03.30.05 - On a walk with my mom and the dogs today. Everything is in bloom.

Sun 03.27.05 - A lazy Easter afternoon, looking up at the backyard elm tree which is starting to leaf out.

Wed 03.02.05 - Blooming freeway off ramp, Euclid & the 91 fwy.

Mon 01.17.05 - Looking up into the canopy of the old olive tree.

Mon 01.17.05 - A gnarled, leaning olive tree in my neighborhood.

I love sycamore trees. The older they get the more whimisical and turn-y their branches grow. The best sycamores are the big, big ones that have grown old near (dry) stream banks and flood plains.

These sycamores are in Hart Park and were most likely planted in the 1930s when the park was developed, even though they have been pruned badly a couple of times, they are still grand trees. Photographed by my Nokia 7610 this afternoon.

Today is the shortest day of the year for the northern hemisphere.

Happy Winter Solstice. May we actually get some winter around here.

The moom was a very light dusky grey-biege with a very bright white-yellow cap of bright reflective light. Very beautiful.

May of 2003, I planted six tulip bulbs in my driveway side yard after receving them as a birthday gift. They have never bloomed. I admit that I didn't refigerate them all summer and fall and then plant them in January as one is supposed to in SoCal.

Last week after our first round of rains, when green shoots came up near where I had planted the tulip bulbs, I got excited. Hey, it is not spring, it is the beginning of fall. But it is SoCal and bulbs can get confused here as the rains start before the cold starts. Then again, the confusion continues as it never really gets cold here.

On Friday, as I was packing up the car to go to my client meeting and then to Bishop/Mammoth, I noticed that the greenery was about to bloom. I came home on Sunday to Paper Whites in the early fall, not red tulips in the spring. Confused bulbs.

The sure sign that my favorite season of the year has come again: The return of the wood warblers to their SoCal wintering grounds.

I just went out on my walk and debated about should I take my camera, but left it at home to my regret. As I turned the last corner before arriving home, I heard a familiar winter call, I looked up and had to wait a bit before the local wintering warbler gem came into view: the Townsend's Warbler. The bird hopped around the branches of a magnolia tree picking off insects and came within seven feet of me. Dang for leaving my camera at home, but joy in the turning of the season and such a delightful little fellow(ess).

Forget live web cams featuring some young thing around her house, or a live web cam of someone at their desk at work, or even of a city or airport, let's talk - Mt. St. Helens.

Yes, everyone's favorite moody, and occasionally eruptive, gal in Washington State has her own live web cam and you don't have to trot out your credit card. Go watch her.

I am now officially Alex's external hard drive or his "Mini-Me" or his official Assistant Talent Buyer / Assistant General Manager, depending on how you want to label my employment. He calls me his external hard drive, I laugh because it is true, as my overactive memory and large brain are both finally good for something... ;op

While we have official office hours of Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 to 7pm, I am at Alex's more days than that and many evenings. All of this combined with my web design business, magazine world, and teaching, makes for very long days and even longer nights getting me home and in bed usually around 2 or 3 am.

Last night I got home just before 2am, I ate dinner, read the paper, took a shower, and went down to sleep after 3am. All the while I kept hearing loud munching, scraping, and gnawing sounds.

This summer the kitchen had a rodent who lived in the basement but would crawl up between the broken plaster to visit the trash can below the sink. Last night, I wondered if said rodent had crawled up into the wall between my desk in the living room and my bedroom as the chewing / gnawing sounds were very loud. As I tried to go to sleep, the sound appeared to come from just near my window.

This afternoon I went to water the lawn and backyard only to discover that the hydranga bush next to my bedroom window was sporting only the top five leaves. It was missing the other 30 to 40 leaves that it had two days ago.

Scuffy has been known to chew on the bottom leaves of the hydranga when he has the time, but last night he was at Joe's. The neighborhood cats don't chew on it. That only leaves one of Waggle Butt's great grandkids... Yes, the local possum family.

The attack of the killer possum!

Yesterday was clear sunny and hot in Orange and partly cloudy in Long Beach. By the time I got home last night, Orange was party cloudy.

Sometime around 2am last night it rained. Not just a wee bit of late summer off track Mexican monsoon muggy drizzle, but at least 20 minutes of hard downpour.

Very exciting. Rumors are floating around that the Pacific may be in an El Nino year. Excess precipitation to end this drought would be much welcomed.

About a week after the Fourth of July we here in SoCal enterned into the Dog Days of Fire Season. I am now riding out the heat that should last well into October.

As a moderate pale green, I live without air conditioning in the house and car. Car - I don't have the $$$ at any given time to refresh the old school freon. House - I don't feel like paying for some SoCal Edison's executive's family August vacations to Alaska with a $350 electrical bill per month. I like our $23 / month summer electrical bill.

Scruffy is one unhappy hot pup. Ms. Jen is currently sporting a Marge Simpson-like hairdo in the attempt to be cooler, except it is not blue nor do I store my change in the updo.

But the backyard lemon tree is at its absolute happiest that I have seen it in the nearly four years that I have lived here, as it is bearing big, juicy lemons instead of bizarrely shaped lemons with no juice. This evening I plucked three lemons, juice still hot from the day's heat, and made Sangriade.

Ms. Jen's Sangriade:

The juice of 3 lemons
1/4 cup sugar (or more to taste)

Mix together in a jug or quart liquid containter. Shake or stir to dissolve the sugar.

Add 1/2 cup cold water
1 (750 ml) bottle of good red wine (pinot noir or cotes du rhone or Sangre de Toro or shiraz)

Shake again. Serve over ice.

Mighty tasty and refreshing.

In the alley/back parking lot behind the squat run down 1950's five shop strip "mall" that houses the best Thai food in the whole of the state of Caliornia or the U.S. or Western Hemisphere depending on the critic (quite bizzarely in Norwalk of all places); there perches, swoops, and devores flies and other opportunistic insects is a whole clan of barn swallows. Colorful, chirpy, and cheerful, they light up every hot summer in that dingy alley that they call home.

If I haven't raved up Renu Nakorn yet, go. Drive down the 5 fwy or up it to the of what some Angelenos or Orange Countias would call the nmiddle no man's land of SoCal between the 605 and 10 fwy... go. Go for the best Thai that will ever delight your mouth. Go in the summer to see the barn swallows perched on the back telephone lines. Go for the beef larp, the papaya salad, and the sticky rice.

Photo Friday : Ocean

Views from the Seal Beach pier at 6pm on Sat. July 17th, 2004. Even though the Fire / Sun / Summer Season has started, Catalina Island, Saddleback Mountain and the San Gabriels were to be seen in the distance through the haze, humidity, oil platforms, palm trees, container ships (over 10 awaiting berth at the LA harbor), and homes. A beautiful but too hot day.

When I was 9 and 10, I used to "borrow" quarters from my mom after she left for work and I would ride the bus to Seal Beach to go to the pier , sunbathe (yes, once I did before I discovered white skin, black clothes and red lipstick), and visit with the seals (actually, I used non-bus quarters to buy bait fish to throw to the seals). Twenty five years later, the beach and pier are still a delight, but in 2004 no parent would let their 10 year old ride the bus to the beach and there are no harbor seals left, just stingrays. Lots of rays, as they breed at Seal Beach now. What happened to the seals?

Crow with Grape walking across the Stater Bros. parking lot in Fullerton last Thursday.

My mom and I went for a walk at the Bolsa Chica wetlands today. Spring is definitely turning into summer as the sun was warm and the black-necked stilt babies are learning to forage for food in the shallows.

In this three set of photos, the adult stilts were keeping an eye on two chicks who were exploring the shoreline on both sides of the railroad tie.

This was the second June in a row that my mom and I have seen black-necked stilts shepherding their tiny chicks around the shallows.

On our way back to the car, we spied the below two egrets (one Great Egret and one Snowy Egret) standing in wait in the upwelling created by the tide flowing out of the pipes between the two lagoons for the schools of silver fish fry that love to swim in the churning waters. Twenty feet down the levee, I spied this young shark swimming towards the south side of the fish school. On the right, this low lying colorful marsh plant was flowering.

A house finch family is nesting in the underside of the overhang of the stripmall that India Sweet and Spices is in. When I walked out of India Sweet and Spices, I looked up and I saw the father feeding the babies insects. By the time I got my camera out, he had moved outside the nest and was watching me.

This has been an odd rainy season in Southern California as most of my friends who did not grow up in the state but in a more rainy places perceived this winter rainy season as "normal." As we got one good storm a week and a half ago, many of these folks groaned about "more rain?". I was quick to state, each time, that we are actually in a drought as San Diego and Orange counties only received 50% of normal rainfall and LA county about 64%.

I wonder why people who are used to much more rain are perceiving this as a normal rain year or even a bit too much when we have had few storms? Yes, this "winter" was cooler than usual, but it was dry. This year reminded me of the seven year drough in the late 80s / early 90s - maybe 2-3 storms a month or less rather than the usual 5-6 a month during the rainy season.

Here are the numbers from today's LA Times:

The Black Iris that I received last April 24th from my mother on my birthday bloomed its first flowers today since last May. Its first blooms were the day after I planeted it last year and then it had two more blooms in late May 2003 before it was over for the year. I was not sure if I was supposed to take it out for the summer like a tulip, so I left it in and watered it throughout the last year. Yesterday, when I took the pictures below, the Iris plant was all leaves, but this afternoon two flowers have started to bud and unfold!

Speaking of the 24th of April, it will be my 12 x 3 birthday and this blog - Black Phoebe :: Ms Jen will be one year old . My official birthday party will be the next evening, Sun. April 25th, at Alex's Bar with the Scothgreens, Trucker Up and one more band that I am awaiting confirmation on. The show starts at 8pm, ends at 11pm, and is only $3. Come join us.

Last year the unknown once-a-year flowering vine that has perched itself ontop of the overgrown side-of-the yard hedge bloomed in late January. This year it just started to send its flower buds out last week and went into full bloom today.

A Wee Bit Late, But Beautiful.

Photo shot from the door of the Doll Hut with a view of snow covered San Gabriel Mountains in the far distance at 4:30pm today.

1) Sign of Summer on its Way I: On Wed. Feb. 25th, while drive north back home along the I-15 after helping my Grandma pack up to move, I saw a few very early swallows swooping through the sky above the freeway. A week later, I saw a lone swallow flying about. Today I saw about 10 in Anaheim. While it is not quite time for the swallows to return, a week or two more to go, the advance scout guard has arrived from their wintering grounds in South America.

2) Sign of Summer on its Way II: Even though we, here in Orange County, are still 4 inches of rainfall under normal, the first good hot Santa Ana winds of the season showed up today. It was 83 -87 degrees Fahrenheit, nice winds, balmy to down right hot outdoors, and the garden wilted by 2pm.

3) Sign of the Apocalypse Starting Any Day Now: While various sects and cults have been predicting the end of the world for hundreds if not thousands of years now, P&GE will be delivering it to the faucets, showers, and tap water of Southern Californians ASAP. I predict that shares of Fiji bottled water will be shooting up ASAP. Buy now while you can, stock up, and turn off your faucet, as the Brita can't filter Chromium 6....

PG&E's Toxic Plume Creeps Toward L.A. Water Supply

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is poised to begin pumping polluted groundwater from under the Mojave Desert to stop the toxic chemical hexavalent chromium from seeping into the Colorado River and tainting the water supply of 18 million Southern Californians.

The chemical compound, made infamous by the 2000 movie "Erin Brockovich," is "on the brink of contaminating the Colorado River," the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California warned in a strongly worded Feb. 11 letter to state regulators.

"We ask that you take additional emergency action sufficient to protect a resource of such critical importance to California," the letter said.

The slow-moving toxic plume is emanating from land near PG&E's Topock natural gas compressor station, south of Needles on California's border with Arizona.

The utility used the chemical compound, also known as chromium 6, to control such things as corrosion and mold in water cooling towers at the isolated plant, which pushes natural gas along a pipeline from west Texas to the Los Angeles Basin. PG&E dumped the untreated wastewater in nearby percolation beds between 1951 and 1969.

The plume of at least 108 million gallons of chromium 6-tainted water is now threatening the river and causing alarm among experts at the Metropolitan Water District, which operates the Colorado River Aqueduct, a major source of Los Angeles' drinking water.

"The plume has moved past the last sentry well. It's thought to be 125 feet from the river," said Lisa Anderson, an environmental engineer at MWD's headquarters in Los Angeles.

Levels of chromium 6 in a monitoring well near the river have ranged from non-detectable to more than 100 parts per billion over the last few weeks, Anderson said. The mass of the plume, just a few hundred feet behind the leading edge, measures more than 12,000 ppb, and the maximum legal contaminant level for all types of chromium in drinking water is 50 ppb, she said.

The neighborhood mourning doves are very sweet, trusting, and rather tame ground birds. Molly, the behind the yard neighbor cat, is none of those things.

The local mourning doves like the leftover seeds that fall to the ground below the feeder after the local finches have selected their favorite morsels out of the feeder.

My beef against Molly is illustrated above. Photo taken today at 4:03pm minutes after I noticed that all was quiet in the backyard and looked out the window to investigate.

The next door neighbor's beef against Molly is that her owners have not spayed her nor do they keep her indoors.

It is time for the Cats Indoors movement to pick up speed, before the HydroRepulsion™ movement lands me in jail...

Last night the "severe storm" that was supposed to hit SoCal as fierce as it hit NorCal was more of the average "lots of rain" winter storm. By mid-morning today, the sky was partly-cloudy, but by noon we had rain again. Just before 2pm this afternoon, I went out and took pictures of finches at the bird feeders and flowering vines in my backyard. By 5pm, the clouds had mostly cleared and the sun was shining bright.

The pictures on the left are when it was raining at 1:45 pm and the pictures on the right are of the 5pm sunshine time. American and Lesser Goldfinches finally found the thistle sock about 3 days ago:

Good News: It is raining!

We, here in Southern California, have been 5-6 inches under the normal for the rainy season. If we don't start seeing some good storms rolling our way, we will have a drought this summer.

Rain, Rain, come again - this week, next and the one after that...

I would like to recommend The Royal Tit-Watching (Ornithological) Society of Britain website, as it is a great example of how the Brits are much better at wittily making fun of themselves and their nerdy hobbies.

Do check out the Shop for Tits store. I wear a "large" in the Classic Girl line, feel free to get me the Nice Tits tank top or the Great Tits girlie T. ;oD

Now I am inspired to figure out a fun t-shirt design featuring Black Phoebes....

10 Years Ago Today....

At 1:18am or thereabouts, I made a funny joke about a certain huge rock star in his presence at a small club in Hollywood. Well, he was wearing awful pants with a baseball jersey. I was young, moderately full of myself, and well, it was funny....

At 3:26am or thereabouts, the whole world started to move. I aroused all my roommates and made them get into their doorways. One ran to the bathroom thinking she had to throw up, it took her 15 seconds to realize it was the earth, not her stomach.

30 seconds later, the rolling, heaving, and profundo bass roar subsided.

For the next 15 minutes, we watched the apartment complex pool continue to loose two-thirds of its water from residual waves.

For the next 2 hours, roommates' relatives called from out of state to make sure everyone was safe. My family, 4-5 geneations of Californians, went straight back to bed and did not call anyone.

Only one thing fell in the whole apartment and it fell on thick carpet. My trick of using cushy shelf paper and turning all glasses upside down worked.

But... we lived in Fullerton, on bedrock of the Sunny Hills.

For all the folks who lived in the Valley on alluvial soils and river sand.... Here's to you, 10 years later.

Cnn.com reports today: Japanese scientists say they've found new whale species

Ms. Jen opines: And then they killed them all. You can find the possible new species of baleen whale packaged nicely at the meat counter of your local supermarket.

Come on Japan and Norway, stop the whaling under the disguise of "scientific research"! If you want to eat whale and see if as your culinary cultural right, then raise it yourself like beef don't hunt out of the wild.

Coming back from my daily bike ride this afternoon, I saw this liquid amber tree a block away from my house. Many of the native California sycamores have been turning brown and losing leaves for a couple of months, but this week the non-native maples and liquid ambers have been turning shades of yellow and red.

Lovely.

Resident House Finch Male and Mockingbird at the top of the frontyard Elm

Late this afternoon, I was pulling up all the dead flowers from the driveway side garden, when I heard and saw a large mixed flock of warblers and bushtits mobbing the backyard elm, next door larch tree, and driveway ficus tree. At first, I thought it was just bushtits, but there were flashes of yellow with higher, louder calls. Migrating Warblers!

The Black Phoebe who drove out the Warblers with the local Hummingbird

I ran in to the house to get my camera. I did was not able to capture any of the warblers or bushtits, but I did photograph the resident black phoebe, house finch, and hummingbird that were trying to defend their territory and run the warblers out of the yard. The resident mocking bird and western scrub jay were holding their usual places at the top of the frontyard elm.

Warbler tries to land on larch tree as House Finch defends his territory

As the flock of approx. twenty warblers bipped and bopped around the backyard trees, I was able to identify Nashville Warblers (!!), Townsend Warblers (!!), and Yellow Warblers, and possibly a Black and White Warbler (not sure on this one). The warblers were intermingling with the bushtits, and moving so fast that I was not able to get any good pictures. Over all it was a delightful 20 minutes.

House Finch

NASA's Earth Observatory reports:

Although the large fires that ravaged Southern California are now under control, they can be blamed for the polluted air that is spreading over the Western States and into the Pacific Ocean. In additional to ash and smoke, the fires released carbon monoxide into the atmosphere as they burned. This false-color image shows the atmospheric column of carbon monoxide, with yellow and red indicating high levels of pollution. The data were taken by the Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite for the period October 26-31, 2003.

According to the AP reports on Salon.com and Iwon.com, the California wildfires are on their way to being contained.

From the Salon.com AP report:

Firefighters contained the largest and deadliest of Southern California's vast wildfires Tuesday and made progress against others as the death toll grew to 22.

Rain and snow, with chilly temperatures, have aided firefighters in the mountains in recent days. Many firefighters had been sent home, leaving remaining crews to douse hot spots and watch for new ones.

San Diego County's 280,000-plus-acre Cedar Fire was fully surrounded by fire breaks Tuesday.

The Old Fire in San Bernardino County, the last of the blazes to threaten communities, was 93 percent contained as it smoldered in forest atop the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles.

Elsewhere, the Paradise Fire was 80 percent contained at 56,700 acres; San Bernardino County's Grand Prix Fire was 98 percent contained after burning more than 59,000 acres; and the 64,000-acre Piru Fire in Ventura County was 85 percent surrounded.

USDA / Forest Service California Fire Maps

It was in the late 40s last night and I got to put on my thrid blanket! Wahoooo! Happy Sleeping weather here I come!

Both Lisa Johnson and my roommate, Lauren, informed me around around 6pm tonight that we had a beautiful orange sliver moon peeping through the ash cover.

Other parts of the Northern Hemisphere get October harvest moons, we get LA Fire moons.

The above satellite photo was taken on Sun. 10/26/03 by the US Forest Service / NASA Satellite. We have been downwind of the big plume for over 4 days now. Today is back to falling ashes and heat.

The above photo is from the LA Times coverage.

Nasa has a more comprehensive satellite image showing the smoke plumes going hundreds of miles out in to the Pacific and an article explaining the sat photos. The high res NASA photo shows fires also burning down the Baja California coast and more than half of the Salton Sea in algae bloom.

CNN.com and the LA Times report this evening on the Southern California Wildfires.

LA Times map

Bascially there is a wall of fire burning up the mountains and hills from San Diego to Ventura. I am somewhat overstating the case, but as you can see from this map of the Old Fire the whole front range of the San Bernardino Mountains in on fire or burned to a crisp. The Old Fire has now merged with the Grand Prix Fire on the east end of the San Gabriel Mountains.

On one hand, we are very glad when we get a decent to good year of rain, like this past winter, but when combined with an extremely hot summer it makes for a horrible fire season. I have been praying that the high pressure system will lift off the Northwest and send our first storm of the season to douse us with moisture. The last good October rain we had was in 2000 over Halloween weekend.

My Grandma Grace and step-Grandpa Bill live in North Escondido on a ridge that over looks a very dry arroyo and in the distance one can see Valley Center and Mt. Palomar. My aunt Anne and cousin Brian drove down tonight to evacuate Grandma and Bill out as the Julian Fire, which is the largest of the fires burning right now, has now reached Escondido. Please pray that they do not lose their house, as they have had a very tough year with Bill's broken vertabrae and Parkinson's diagnosis.

Here in Orange, the Santa Ana winds and the accompanying rain of ash ceased around noon today leaving a strange, murky, dusky stillness in its wake. Just after 6pm, a lovely, cool offshore breeze started up and brought temperatures down into the late 60s. What a relief.

Lest I seem whiney, I must note after my other two posts about how bizarre the weather has been in the LA basin in the last 24 hours, I would like to state that it is currently warmer right now than it was at noon.

It feels like it is 80-something outside, but according to all the online weather sources it is 71 degrees farenheit. It is 1:25 am.

At 8:24 pm (PST) the Santa Ana Winds started.

I walked out at 8:55pm and the the ashes from the fire were whirling everywhere along with leaves and debris. Yet, the stars were still obscured by clouds and fog.

Now at 9:36pm, there is ashes and dust on every surface in the house and the sky is clear. Mars is shining orange gold half way up the southern sky.

I woke up late this morning to weird diffused brown-yellowish light streaming into my room. It was not the bright yellow of California sun, nor the soft, diffused grey light of fog/inversion clouds, but an odd apocalyptic brown-yellow mist.

After a week of high heat in the 90s, yesterday was cool and misty. Thick fog rolled in by 8pm and blanketed Orange and Anaheim, and most likely the rest of the LA basin but I only ventured as far as the Doll Hut. When I woke up, I half expected the fog to still be lurking about, but the color of the light was so odd, I got up to investigate.

I took my camera and looked out all of the windows of the house into the back and side yards, and found the world to be draped in soft orange-brown-yellow tones. Upon exiting out to the driveway, I found a layer of ash on my car and on every surface. Ash was falling down much like a light snowfall. The sun, which was trying to break through the fog / cloud cover, was a reddish-orange ball.

CNN.com and the LA Times are reporting that the Rancho Cucamonga Grand Prix wildfire has grown to over 16,000 acres and has closed down the 15 fwy. They are both reporting high Santa Ana winds are flaming the blaze. Usually if the SA winds are coming through the Cajon Pass then we here in Orange would not be socked in with fog / inversion clouds, as the SA winds usually roar down the the Cajon pass through the Inland Empire then it speeds up through Santa Ana Canyon to clear out all the air through south LA and north / central OC.

The ashfall seems strangely out of place given the lack of winds here in Orange, the stagnant cloud layer, and we are approximately 50 miles southwest of the Grand Prix Fire. It is now 3pm, and the sun has not burned through the cloud cover. We are in an all day twilight with ash continuing to fall lightly down.

Today, I went over to Blue's to help her out with her computer. As I was walking up to her place, the olive trees were full of flitting, chirping birds. At first I thought they were the usual SoCal crew of twittering bushtits, but I kept seeing flashes of blue.

As I walked up the sidewalk, the birds would flush out of the nearest tree to the tree just in front of me. It was enough movement and flight for me to realize that I had walked into a large migrating flock of western bluebirds, orange-crowned warblers, and yellow rumped warbers. There were at least 40 plus birds.

Truly wonderful and extraordinary.

Get out in the next week to areas of trees and calm, and you may find yourself delighted to be in the midst of a flock of northern birds on the way to their winter holidays in Latin America.

As mentioned in my posts of the last hour, Erika and I went on a circumnavigation of the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. Usually we walk on the path that is a couple of hundred yards east of Pacific Coast Highway. Today we started at the parking lot just off PCH and walked around and ended up walking down PCH. Bad idea. Halfway through the walking south on PCH in the bike lane, I was lightheaded by the car fumes. Luckily there is a culvert between the two lagoons that allowed us to walk back on the good path.

Here are my pictures of the various photogenic and attention hound birds that we came across in our 1.5 hour jaunt at sunset /dusk. There were several snowy egrets, 3 great egrets, and one kingfisher in the photos. We also saw, but I did not capture with the Mavica, brown pelicans in flight, a lot of ruddy ducks, a few surf scoters, various terns & gulls, and pied-billed grebes.

This late-afternoon / early-evening, Erika and I went for a walk at Bolsa Chica Wetlands and then to dinner at Kung-Pao in Huntington. At dinner, Erika asked me what was happening with the spider family that was homesteading on the trash bin. She reminded me that I had not blogged about it in weeks and that I had a duty to my readers to update.

Here's the update: Two Tuesdays of Trash Days after the last update, the trash bin went out to the curb with Ms. Spider and her two egg sacs attached on Monday evening and came back on Tuesday afternoon sans Ms. Spider and her two egg sacs. I did not bring the trash cans back, as the front house neighbor got to them before I could, so I don't know if the spider family took off on their own out at the curb, was shaken off into the trash truck, or if the front neighbor sprayed them with Raid. I am sorry to report that there is only a remnant of her web left dangling on the trash bin.

In many parts of the country, this is the time of year when the leaves are falling and folks are tucking their gardens in for the winter. Here in Zone 23 of the Sunset Garden Guide, we are losing leaves and many of the garden plants are thinking about tucking in for a short nap.

Right about now is when the basil and tarragon decide that it is time to die. If I clip them down and continue to water them, they will rise again in March or thereabouts. The basil in the driveway side garden is now over 4 feet tall and just starting to yellow a bit. I suppose I ought to harvest it now before it dies off on me. Although, I am still getting new shoots and side branches. Desicions, decisions, decisions.

Many SoCal gardeners will plant a whole new season of vegetables and flowers in Sept. and Oct. for the fall and winter. I have pansy and winter sweet pea seeds waiting to go in as soon as the summer garden is over.

Since last summer the large branch nearest to the garage on the big backyard elm tree has been dying and is now officially dead. I am not sure why - maybe an Elm Disease, maybe bad pruning, the big wind storm last winter, maybe drought, who knows.

But the local Downy Woodpecker population loves the dead branch, as evidenced by the apprearance of this little woodpecker doing her job on the bottom side of the branch by pecking a large patch of bark off to get the boring insects. I took about 7 pictures before I got one that really showed the bird's coloring and best angle.

Tuesday Trash Adventure has come and gone. Ms. Spider and her two egg sacs full of offspring are still attached to the trash bin.

Living in SoCal also means living with lots of spiders. If you have arachnophobia, it can be a problem or you get used to screaming and using Raid. I happen to not mind spiders, esp. if they will do their job and eat insects.

My general attitude towards spiders is as follows:
1) Only Daddy Long Legs allowed in the house. All others must exit or face death.
2) All Daddy Long Legs must homestead their 144 sq. inches properly. To prove their claim, they must catch and eat at least 4 insects per week, preferrabley of the flying variety or the ant variety. If there are more than 3 homesteaders per room or if they go beyond their allowed 144sq. inches (one foot by one foot), they and their webs will get vacuumed up.
3) All other spiders must live in the great outdoors. If you are a black widow, do not make a nest or hidey hole in my gardening gloves, as I will stamp on you thoroughly before I put them on.

In the summer, there is a certain species of spider (see pics) that is about 1/4 to 1/2 inch wide/thick that makes very beautiful, intricate and large webs in between trees or across walkways. These spiders tend to do it at night and I usually walk right into the web and have a good scream as I scrape the web off and hope the spider is not on me.

The she spider, featured in these photos I took today, decided about four weeks ago or so to take up residence and thus nesting & laying of her two egg sacs on the front of the regular trash bin (as opposed to the recycling bin or green bin). I am sure she thought she was being smart, no humans or pets walking through her web, ruining her next or hurting her eggs. But every Tuesday for the last four weeks, she and her egg sacs have gotten to trundle down the driveway, sit out on the curb for 12+ hours, get picked up by the trash truck automatic lever, lifted in the air, all contents (except what is attached to the web) dumped upside down in to the trash truck, set down by the lever not so lovingly and then trundled back up the bumpy driveway.

Out of pure, shear fascination, I have not swept the spider, her web or egg sacks away, because I am very curious how many weeks of the Tuesday Trash Adventure she is will to endure before she realizes that the trash can is a bad place to homestead.

CNN.com had the following intriguing headline today in the Science and Space section:

'Lousy' genes show clothes are 70,000 years old

Adam and Eve may have put on fig leaves while still in the Garden of Eden but a study that looked at the most intimate of pests -- body lice -- suggests that humans started wearing clothes 70,000 years ago, scientists said on Monday.

The genetic study of the lice strongly suggests they -- and clothing -- arose soon after modern Homo sapiens began moving out of Africa and into the cooler regions of Europe.

In my opinion, one of the true marks of a highly civilized and technological society is not electronics or cars or space flight, but the wonders of being lice and flea free. Ok free of personal livestock as long you don't rub heads with an infected five year old or get too drunk and go home with somebody you don't know at a show and rub other parts with them.... Just say no to substitute teaching and drunk bar patrons!

Tonight around 7:25 pm, I decided to go for a walk down at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands Reserve. I arrived at 7:52pm, when all the signage has the reserve closing at 8pm. Most folks were leaving as I arrived, which left the walking paths all to little ole me. The sun set and the Bolsa Chica State Beach bonfire smoke lilted over PCH and the water to me as I was walking.

Most of the shore and water birds took no notice of me and became very active. The best part was a black & white stilt who decided I was a threat and barked at me. It sounded like a small yapping poodle.

As I neared the bluff, about 7 night herons were hanging out on the walking path. I watched them for a bit and then turned around to go back to the car. It was a delightful walk, cool, alone, and evening.

The California Wildflower Seed Mix that I planted in the Kitchen/Driveway Side Garden back in May is finally flowering. July had the first poppies, now in August we are getting white with crimson flowers, blue-violet flowers, black and purple - vertitable profusion of Calif. natives. Yeah!

On the World's Tallest Basil note: Vivian Hernandez told me last Thursday night, after seeing the picture of my basil, that her's was taller. When I have planted basil in pots in the past, I have never had them grow taller than 12". To hear that Vivian has basil in excess of 30" and mine is now at least 34" this week, I guess that planting one's basil in the ground with good amended soil and lots of sun makes all the difference.

Ok, maybe it really isn't the world's tallest basil, but the tallest one in my kitchen herb garden is at 29 inches tall. Just over two feet, dwarfing the usually out of control sorrel, thyme and lavender.

Time to have a pesto party.

The California Wild Flower seeds that I planted in my driveway side yard garden have spent two months growing into a large thatch of unruly greenery, of which I despaired of ever seeing one of the many CA poppies actually flower. I was afraid that I planted the seed mix too late in the spring and with all of the hot weather, it would be a no go for the poppies.

I left for church, late as usual, and there were no little orange/yellow blooms. But when I returned, one brave poppy soul had popped into a bloom. Yeah!

Most amusing the brave little orange flower decided to bloom right next to my official "Crop Circle". The "crop circle" started as a small 6 inch oval of flower greenery laying down on Wed. or Thurs. morning. I thought I needed to water with the heat and all. I watered several times over the last few days, and the "circle" just got bigger.

Is it California Wild Seed fairies or a mini-UFO??? Or just a neighborhood cat trying to reclaim its former outdoor litterbox? Or has the lawn and elm tree fungi decided to claim the side yard as well? Inquiring minds want to know...

More from the LA Times on Legacy of DDT:

Women who were exposed while still in the womb to the pesticide DDT are more likely to experience delays in getting pregnant, according to a study of California mothers and daughters published today in an international medical journal.

The report by the Public Health Institute in Berkeley is the first scientific evidence that DDT that collects in women's bodies can affect their female offspring many years later, when they reach adulthood and attempt to reproduce.

The findings support a controversial theory that pesticides and other environmental contaminants that mimic sex hormones are altering human fertility and health.

At the end of the LA Times articles:

Another study recently reported that men exposed to pesticides have as much as a 30-fold reduction in sperm quality.

From the Global Programme for Action website, reporting on the effects to human male fertility:

In a study in India, a group of men who worked with DDT was found to have decreased fertility, and a significant increase in still births, neonatal deaths and congenital defects among their children. Israeli men with unexplained fertility problem were also found to have high blood levels if DDT.

More links on this subject:
BBC: Health Pesticides 'reduce male fertility'
The Lancet Journal

Today the LA Times and KPCC both reported that Bald Eagles are officially back in Southern California for the first time since the 1930s. What they mean is that there are two nine week old eaglets living in a nest near Lake Hemet.

The LA Times article states:

If the 9-week-old eaglets survive, federal and state wildlife officials say, they will have begun repopulating the southern end of their historical nesting range before bald eagles were all but wiped out in California by coastal development and the manufacture and use of the pesticide DDT.

The farthest south that successful nests have been found in California since recovery efforts began is in central Santa Barbara County, said Ron Jurek, who coordinates bald eagle recovery tracking statewide for the Department of Fish and Game.

The LA Times article was front page in the California section and had two large pictures. When I saw the first picture and the headline, my heart jumped. After reading the whole thing, my frist thought was "Thank God, we have finally done something right."

This is the first nestlings that have made it past the egg stage in SoCal since the 1930s. DDT in the environment weakened eggs to the point of no live hatchings, and development encroached on the coastline and lakes of the area. Bald eagles have in the last few years returned to Big Bear Lake in the winter time, but go north to breed. Until now.

Many of you know that I am a big bird fan and feel very frustrated by the continual unstoppable development of SoCal. When nature and common sense prevails over rich developers making more money, I feel encouraged. The DDT that destroyed the eggs of eagles, pelicans, and many other birds certainly effected the whole of the ecosystem and not just the birds. There is still a huge plume of DDT off the coast of Palos Verdes and South Santa Monica Bay.

I have seen 2 bald eagles in the wild in my life. First one was in the summer of 1990, when my dad and I were putting around the shoreline of Catalina Island, near White's Landing, and we had the pleasure of watching a bald eagle fish in a kelp bed no more than 50 feet from our little boat. The second time was last summer as my mom and I were driving around June Lake (in the Sierra Nevada mtns.) and a bald eagle was soaring above the lake and road. Truly amazing.

The best view of the backyard birdfeeder is from the bathroom window, and the best way to watch without scaring the birds off. Imagine my surprise this morning to see a large black, orange, yellow and white bird at the feeder. I snuck out of the bathroom quietly to grab my digital camera, and came back stealthly. Here are the resulting photos:

The house finch of the left of both pictures is the average bird that comes to the feeder. Occasionally, a house sparrow will show up. And frequently, black phoebe or warbler will show up to watch the spectacle of infighting for perch space, but they will go about their insect eating ways.

My housemate Lauren told me that she recently saw a bright yellow bird at the feeder (goldfinch?), but today is my very first time of seeing a Grosbeak at the feeder. After consulting my bird guides, I determined that this fellow is a Black Headed Grosbeak.

Thank you, sir, for showing up and making my morning much brighter.