Monday, May 29, 2006

Pioneering Pine

While mowing the stretch of hillside above our stand of Italian Stone Pines (Pinus pinea), I came across three small seedlings that certainly appear to be one or two year old Italian Stone Pines.

It’s a bit of a mystery how the seedlings could be where they are, though — I suspect an animal was involved. Pine seeds are, of course, in pine cones — and unless pine cones are embued with magical powers, they don’t normally roll uphill. So I’m guessing a bird or a rodent moved those seeds uphill 20 or 30 feet.

These Italian Stone Pines do remarkably well in the chaparral zone — they don’t need good soil (and that’s a good thing around here!) and they don’t need much water as they have a wonderfully deep tap root. When we first bought our place seven years ago, we also had about six large Monterey pines — all of which died just two or three into the drought years. The Italian Stone Pines never even looked peaked…

Anyway, it’s nice to see them propagating…maybe I’ll end up with an Italian Stone Pine forest!

Monkey Flowers

The “Bush Monkey Flower” or “Sticky Monkey Flower” (Diplacus aurantiacus) is a common native that is in full bloom right now in our area. It is especially beautiful this year; I’ve no idea why that is so. The color varies from an even paler orange than these in my yard to a very deep reddish-orange. According to several web sites I read, the plant gets its common name from the resemblence of the flowers to a grinning monkey’s head. Riiiiight. I suspect some botanist was smoking loco-weed when he came up with that one! The leaves really are sticky, though. The stands that are near our pine trees have their leaves covered with pine pollen…

There are a dozen or so stands of Monkey Flower in the cleared part of our yard (about 3.5 acres), every last one of them in a rocky area with partial shade. And indeed the literature avers that this is exactly the situation they like. The rest of our property (another 6+ acres) is covered in chaparral growth that is for the most part taller than the Monkey Flowers, so it’s hard to say how many more we have. However, on a walk along a trail I’ve cut that’s perhaps 1000 feet long, there are 8 stands of them — all around rocky formations, and all under the 4 to 6 foot high chaparral “canopy”. You could infer several hundred stands from that, much more common than it is in my cleared yard — which makes sense, given that it doesn’t like full sun…

Anyway, here are some photos of the stands in our yard:

Miki and Rocks

With just a little bit of encouragement, Miki will now zoom right up the steepest of rocks in our yard. He seems to have very little trouble getting up even the nearly-vertical sides of some of them, happily scrabbling until a paw randomly finds a grip, then he zooms up a foot or so and does it again. Eventually he gets to the top of just about any rock. In the far-right photo, that’s exactly what he just did.

But once at the pinnacle of a boulder, he’s not quite so sure what to do next. If the rock is less than about five feet high, eventually he’ll screw up his courage and leap. If it’s taller, he’ll sit there and wait for me to come rescue him.

That’s what’s happening in the left-hand photo — and I’ve enlarged his expression in the center photo. Doesn’t he look like he’s saying “Yo! Human! Get over here and get me down!"?

He really, really doesn’t like scrambling down the side of a steep rock. His claws are useless in that direction, though his pads would cling quite well — he just doesn’t seem to understand that…

Miki was home alone with Dad and Lea this weekend, as Debbie was up in Pomona at an agility meet (where Mo’i got FIVE Qs! And he’s now in Excellent B for both jumpers and standard! And he DOUBLE Q’d on Monday!). In between weed-whacking battles, we had some training sessions, both with Miki and with Lea.

Today we had some especially good sessions, from the dogs' perspective…because we had HOT DOGS! I’m convinced there’s nothing on this planet that a dog likes better than hot dogs. Both Miki and Lea are usually gentle food takers (that is, they refrain from chomping off your fingers when you’re giving them a morsel). But with hot dogs…they both basically lose their little minds. They can scarcely contain themselves while waiting for their treat — and when they go to grab it, if your finger happens to be between their jaws, well…that’s really just your tough luck is what they say. Getting the hot dog definitely has priority over leaving dad’s fingers intact. The moment I click the clicker and say “Yes! Good dog!", they’re trembling with hot dog anticipation. If I wait too long (say, more than 10 picoseconds) after clicking before stuffing a hot dog segment into their maw, they lose their ability to sit still. They just gotta have that hot dog! Now! Lea, after about 10 minutes of training exercises, just goes on strike — she refuses to do any exercises and just chases the hand with the hot dog treats!

But those very high-value treats did help focus them on their lessons, in the sense that they would do anything (if they could just figure out what it was!) to get that treat. I had more success with both of them today than I have in any prior training session…

Cats and Hummers

Maka Lea (our most recently-acquired feline, with a neurological problem but otherwise a very nice cat) is watching hummingbirds — albeit a little differently than usual…

We have several hummingbird feeders hanging in our north-facing windows, and they are especially busing in the early mornings and evenings of summer. Our cats all love to sit and watch the hummingbirds. They’ve long since learned that they can’t get to the hummingbirds ('cause of course they’d just love to catch one!), but they never seem to tire of just watching them. Maka Lea, however, is contemplating the shadows of the hummingbirds, cast on our hallway wall by the early morning sunlight slanting in the window…