happy holidays

25-second exposure under a bright moon on the Pacific.

flea marketing

rebel yell

I love how surfers run into the water, like they just can't wait to plunge into the freezing cold surf. When I used to live by the beach on Fulton or Taraval or Balboa, I would often see surfers running down the sidewalk in their wetsuits.

found

walking the dog

ah, fresh produce!

A farm for brussel sprouts in Watsonville.

plovers

I have always loved plovers, the way they run on the beach on their little toothpick legs. Last weekend when we were camping, a woman pointed out to us the way plovers chill in people's footprints on the beach and sometimes try to nest like that. It's not a very stable situation, which is why the plovers are sadly endangered.

campground host

I love this photo because it looks like Juan is doing some Christmas trick-or-treating in an RV park.

californians in the mist

somewhere

There was the faintest hint of a rainbow over this campground in Half Moon Bay.

cue whitesnake

hikers on a hillside

thursday duo

Post office boxes in Sea Ranch (Sonoma):


And mailboxes at the harbor in Sausalito:

sunset talks

The Pacific by Bodega Bay.

never turn your back on the ocean

solitaire

It was so windy at the beach on Saturday that Juan could play frisbee with himself.

old crow

I read that crows can live to be 75 years old.

for the birds

Last week I invested $3 in this bell-shaped chunk of bird seed and tied it to the fire escape with a rubber band. I wanted to feed my little friend, this black phoebe who comes every day and catches insects but, of course, that bird really only eats...insects. It took the other birds two days to find the seed bell, and now there are lots of them, including this Western Scrub-Jay. It is so big that Juan calls it "the blue chicken."



My father would die if he saw this crappy photo, since he does real bird photography. I shot this through the window screen so it is like manually pixelating it.

barkin' up the trees

The bark that covers these trees in Yosemite is cool, maybe even as cool as the red bark covering the manzanita trees. It is all layered and flaky and about three inches deep.

manzanita

I love these trees, too--although some people prefer to call them 'bushes' over 'small trees.' I always thought that this reddish-brown stuff covering them was some sort of tree sap or resin, but it is actually their bark. You learn something new every day!