Category: Life

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A few miles from Hearst Castle, a trash collector spent fifty years cobbling together his house out of junk and found objects. As Cambria became more trendy in the 1970s, neighbors wanted him to tear down the multi-level “eyesore,” while others saw “Nitt Witt Ridge” as a folk art monument. It’s still there, and still a controversy within the city and its historical society.

This seems like the kind of roadside construction that would fit in with American Gods’ cosmology. More like The House on the Rock than Hearst Castle, despite the proximity.

And it turns out that the first of Wyland’s 100+ whale murals, on the wall of a Laguna Beach hotel, was later painted over as an “eyesore.” (C’mon, really?) But since then, a friend of his bought the building, and he’s recreating the original mural. On canvas this time, so he can move it if anything happens to the wall!

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We’ve joked about “feral tomatoes” for ages, and occasionally found a volunteer tomato plant in an unexpected place: a city park, or next to an office parking lot.

Green tomatoes on the vine.

This feral tomato plant was growing out of a crack in the pavement next to the driveway of a grocery store. I imagine someone must have dropped a tomato with viable seeds on the way out and it took hold.

Feral tomato plant growing out of a crack in a driveway.

It’s doing remarkably well, especially under the circumstances of where it is. Heck, it’s doing better than most tomatoes I’ve planted on purpose!

Originally posted on Pixelfed

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A squirrel stands still on top of a wall, a walnut clutched in its mouth, staring at the camera hoping I'll go away.

This squirrel bounded along a wall carrying a walnut in its mouth as I walked down the sidewalk. It stopped and looked at me as if it had been caught in the act of walnut burglary. I had enough time to snap a couple of pictures with my phone and pull out my camera for a better shot before it scampered away.

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A short rainbow-like arc in the sky, backed by wispy clouds and appearing above the silhouette of a palm tree.

A short rainbow-like arc in the sky, backed by wispy clouds and appearing above the silhouette of a palm tree.

This solar halo fragment is high in the sky, near where you’d expect something rare like a circumzenithal arc. But it’s wrapped around the sun at just the right distance to be a common 22° circular halo. On July afternoons, the sun is high to begin with!

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A very clear photo of grass stalks...with a blurry rabbit behind them.

Gotta love it when the camera’s autofocus insists gives you this wonderfully clear image of…the grass in front of the skittish animal you’re trying to get a picture of before it scampers away.

I did manage to get one shot of it before moving on, and then I was able to spot a clearer view of another rabbit during the same hike.

The last few hikes I’ve done at Madrona Marsh, I’ve taken a lot fewer photos. This time…I went a little overboard taking pictures of just about every type of plant or animal I could to post to iNaturalist. Then I narrowed it down to around 40 “good” photos that I’m posting on Flickr over the next week or so. Sadly, my camera battery ran out about halfway through, leaving me with only my phone. Which was perfectly fine for close-ups and landscapes, but not for zoom shots.