Mystery Plant...

A few days ago I wrote about a native plant that I have not been able to identify, a plant with the interesting ability to suppress mustard and filaree.  One reader wrote to offer assistance with identification, and another wrote asking for photos.  So here are a couple of (not particularly good!) photos.

The first one (above right) shows a dense patch of these plants in an area where I have not yet mowed.  Those plants are about 30 inches tall.  In this area there isn't a single weed of any kind.  Before I encouraged this mystery plant, this area was a dense bed of mustard.

At left is a closeup of these same plants.  You can see that they're more stem than leaves, a common desert adaptation. 

In most of my yard I've mowed these down to just an inch and a half high.  So far, they appear to be enduring this abuse just fine.  We'll see for sure in the next couple of months, as I know from past experience that these will continue to grow slowly in the summer months (though my past experience is with unmowed plants!).

Any help on identification would be greatly appreciated.  If nothing else, I'll be able to put the correct name on the shrine I'm planning to erect to this weed-snuffer!!!

Mongols in Jamul!

All day today we've been noticing an intense law enforcement presence in the Jamul area, with far more sheriffs and highway patrol in evidence than we normally see.  Several readers wrote to see if I knew what the heck was going on – I didn't.  But just a few minutes ago, Debbie and I stopped alongside 5 sheriff's cars parked together on Skyline Truck Trail and asked them what was going on.

“Mongols” was the reply.  The Mongols motorcycle gang is gathering in the Jamul area this weekend, and the law enforcement folks are here to make sure they don't get too rowdy.  Oh, and to protect their civil right to assemble peacefully, too.

Debbie and I are torn between being comforted by the law enforcement blanket, or disturbed by the fact that law enforcement perceives the need for such a blanket.

We are unambiguously comforted by the presence of weapons and ammunition in our house, though...

Home!

Back home again, and abruptly back to normal.  Took the dogs out for a walk at 3 am under a very bright half-moon (could see colors all over the yard).  Despite the bright moon, I could see that the Pleiades were well up in the eastern sky, and a bright star (Aldeberan, I think) near by.  That means my summer friend Orion must be visible now, but he was completely washed out by the moon...

The dogs were their usual selves.  Race was all about the pine cones, and the three brown dogs were all about the smells.  There was enough light for me to make out things moving all over the yard – rabbits, I'm pretty sure.  The dogs never noticed them, though that may well be what the brown dogs were smelling...

Sure is nice to be home!

The Cincinnati area was incredibly hot, 116°F on the heat index and 103°F on the thermometer.  The relative humidity was 100%, and felt like it – the air seemed to have substance, to require real work to push through.  Every time I emerged into the outdoors from an air-conditioned space, I gasped with the shock of it. 

When I got home, it was 54°F and 3% relative humidity.  What a relief!

Light Blogging Alert...

I'm about to get on a plane for Cincinnati, Ohio to visit one of our early runbook customers.  I'll be there (tentatively) through Thursday night, and I'm not sure how much attention this blog will get. 

The place we're staying, by purest happenstance, is a mere 40 miles from my mother-in-law's (Kate's) home in Liberty, Indiana.  On Tuesday night I'm going to go visit with her and my sister-in-law Judy (who lives nearby).  Kate doesn't know I'm coming, but Judy does.  Judy and Debbie seem to think it's a good idea to surprise Kate, but I'm not so sure...

Patriotic Flash Mob Music...

Battle of the Weeds...

Every summer out here in the chaparral resurrects the battle of the weeds, wherein all the homeowners break out the power tools and weapons-grade chemicals to knock down the evil weeds.  This isn't only an aesthetic issue – the weeds are dangerous fuel in the fire season, which has just started.  From now through about October, we'll all be unnaturally sensitive to the smell or sight of smoke...

This year is different than previous years around our place, for several reasons.  Firstly, I've had great success encouraging a native plant (that I've yet to identify!); it's now occupying about a third of our cleared yard area with some vigor and density.  This is good for multiple reasons: it inhibits mustard and filaree (the two weeds we hate the most), it's easy to mow, it's a pleasant sage green even through the dry season, and it attracts birds.  Win!  Another difference this year is that we had a very wet winter, and consequently all our native plants had a growth spurt – including the danged weeds.  Finally, I have a new mower this year and it is by far the best tool I've yet had for knocking the weeds down.  This mower is unitimidated by even the toughest “tree mustard”, it's light and easy to maneuver, and it's powered drive works very well indeed on our yard's steep slopes.  Win! 

Today I managed to mow the entire front part of our yard, making two passes to get it all.  My legs are tired.

Debbie and I went down the hill this afternoon to our favorite local sushi (Yuki Sushi in Rancho San Diego) and stuffed ourselves with great sushi.  The salmon and the albacore nigiri sushi was particularly good today.  Then I got a haircut while Debbie went grocery shopping.  While I was getting my hair cut, a guy who looked to be about 50 years old walked in, a little hesitantly.  One look at this guy and you knew he was military.  Sam, the barbershop owner, is very soft-spoken.  He went over to this guy, said hello, and asked him if he wanted a haircut.  The guy (named Joe) nodded yes, and Sam told him there was a line about an hour long.  But then Sam asked Joe if he was military, and Joe, a little puzzled, answered yes.  Sam said “Then there is no wait for you, Joe – step over to my chair and I'll take care of you right now.”  After Joe's haircut was done (before my barber finished with mine!), Joe tried to pay for it and Sam refused, saying that military never paid in his shop.  Joe then tried to give Sam a tip, and Sam refused – and took $20 out of the register and told Joe to have a drink with his friends, on Sam.  Joe was a little embarrassed by all this, but then he and Sam talked for a little while and it became obvious why Sam (an Iraqi Chaldean refugee) was so thankful of the U.S. military.  We also discovered that Joe was a Master Sargeant in EOD (he disarms bombs), and had been on two tours in Iraq and was about to leave for his third in Afghanistan.  Joe walked out with a spiffy new haircut, an extra $20 in his pocket, and a big smile on his face. 

Incidents like this always make me happy, and at the same time bring back some damned unpleasant memories of my treatment as a U.S. sailor by civilians in the '70s.  A free haircut?  It was far more likely I'd have been refused service (and in fact, I used military barbers during that period).  Several of us in the barbershop said something positive to Joe, thanking him for his service or some such thing.  This never happened to me when I was in the military, not even once.  The opposite sort of thing happened so often that I got good at avoiding situations were it might occur, and got quite hardened to it.  Somehow that experience of mine makes it even more meaningful to see incidents like this at Sam's place today...

Runbook Automation...

Runbook Automation (RBA for short) is one of the products that my little team is responsible for developing at ServiceNow.  Our marketing department has started commissioning little videos introducing various products, and Runbook Automation is one of the first of them to be released.  I understand that this video is in the process of being tweaked, but even as is I think it does a great job of introducing the product:

Home...

Well, we're back from vacation.  The daily grind is back on.  I've nearly worked through my enormous email backlog.  People at work have figured out that I'm back, and the press of business is on again.  ServiceNow, still growing at a frenetic pace, changed a bit in the two weeks I was absent, and I'm making some adjustments in my work (this was not unexpected!).  We're over 400 employees now (over a dozen times more than when I started).  Business is still booming.

On our morning walk, the four dogs were completely back to normal.  Race has completely forgotten the joys of sniffing that he indulged in on our trip – now it's all about the pine cones.  The three brown dogs (field spaniels) are a sniffing pack once again, smelling as fast as they can for the pure joy of it.

Here it is mid-July, and our temperatures are still spring-like cool.  Yesterday's high was just 85°F, much cooler than the usual 95°F or so for this season.  August and September are usually our hottest months; if this cool weather persists we're going to have a very pleasant summer here...

Vacation: Day 15 - Last Day in the San Juan Mountains...

Today was our last day in the San Juan Mountains.  Tomorrow morning, at oh-dark-thirty, we're piling ourselves into the truck and aiming for St. George, Utah.

We only had the jeep for a half day today, as we had to bring it back and clean it before turning it back in.  So for our last little trip, we went to Clear Lake – a nice, easy drive off State 550.  The lake itself (at right) was half-frozen, and the lush pastures around it were too immature to sport the deer and elk we looked for.  We were hoping to see some wildlife, and we did: some elk just north of the Red Mountain Pass (on State 550), and then two moose and a snowshoe hare right at the beginning of the Clear Lake road.  All of these sightings were within the first 30 minutes of the drive; the rest of the time we saw only the most common things (chipmunks and marmots).  We did have one other fun sighting: we stopped at a campsite to look at what we thought was an axe someone had left behind.  As we walked around, a grey jay fluttered around us within arms reach, very curious.  Also, Debbie walked up to within a foot or so of a small chipmunk, who seemed completely unperturbed...

We also took another fork in the road that leads out to some campgrounds.  At the very end of the road, just east of a campground, is a series of beaver ponds (and the proud lodge).  These were beautiful, mature ponds with lots of willow around the edges.  The oldest dam has flowers growing on it.  Here are a couple views of it:

And here are some other scenes from the day:

Vacation: Day 14 - Repeat, Upside Down...

We enjoyed yesterday's drive so much that we decided to repeat it – but reversing our path (going the other way always looks so different!).  Our fond hope was that we could repeat yesterday's wildlife spotting bonanza, but such was not to be.  In fact, it was nearly the complete opposite – we saw a few deer (and no fawns), and lots of marmots and chipmunks – but no weasels, pikas, western tanagers, osprey, elk, etc.  If it wasn't for one rather nice encounter with a ptarmigan (more below), we'd have come up almost empty-handed.

The trip started with a quick run up to Engineer Pass – we were up there by 8:30 am.  The two panoramas below were taken from a small knoll just southwest of the pass.  Taken together, they form a 360° panorama from that location.  It sure feels like the top of the world!

The aforementioned ptarmigan encounter occurred on the road from Engineer Pass down to Lake City, at the same place where Debbie spotted the ptarmigan yesterday. We were on the lookout for it again, off in the draw where she had spotted it – when suddenly I spotted the ptarmigan, alongside the road directly in front of the jeep! I slowly got out of the jeep with my camera, hoping to get close enough to get a decent shot. As I walked toward the ptarmigan, she started walking away, and I followed – but then I noticed movement under my feet. Chicks! She had chicks following her! I think she was trying to lure me away from her chicks, but I took a quick couple of snapshots of them and of her, and left.  The little chicks made the most piteous noises as they ran around seaching for their mama.  As soon as we got back in the jeep, the mama came and rounded up her babies.  Photos below. The first one is the mama, the second shows a single chick, and the third shows two chicks (look hard!)...

This kiln is along the road between Engineer Pass and Lake City – really looks out of place, but the explanation makes perfect sense:

Here's a better shot of the cabin we saw yesterday and liked so much. We found out today that the asking price is $649k.

As we were driving up California Gulch, this snow caught my eye because of the curvy edge of it. If you look carefully, you can see that all the curves match the shape of the rushing stream below it – where the stream bumps up over a boulder, the snow was cut in a matching curve, and so on for everything that varies the shape of the water.

Here are some more scenes from today's travels:

Last but not least, here are the flowers from the day:

Vacation: Day 13 - All Over the Damn Place...

We made a grand tour today: up Corkscrew Gulch, over California Pass, down to Animus Forks, over Cinnamon Pass, up and down American Basin, down to Lake City, up Engineer Pass, and finally down Engineer Trail.  Whew – what a day!

But oh, did we have a great day!

The highlight of today was the wildlife.  Here's what we saw: over a dozen deer, dozens of marmots and chipmunks (including a close encounter with one crazy marmot, at right), a long-tailed weasel, two pikas, three Rocky Mountain Goats, two ptarmigans, an osprey, a Rocky Mountain dipper, one western tanager, and a partridge in a pear tree (no, not really).  A ptarmigan at the top of Corkscrew Gulch started us off.  Debbie pulled off another of her astounding wildlife spotter feats today – we were driving down a dirt road at about 20 MPH, and she was looking out the right window.  Somehow she spotted a ptarmigan on the ground, looking like it was sitting on a nest, at about 200' away – almost motionless, camoflauged in the grass and dirt.  Awesome.  Took me five minutes just to find it while she was describing where it was!  It was a great wildlife day...

The entire trip was beautiful scenery, including a lot at over 12,000 feet.  We stopped in Lake City and had a great lunch (Debbie particularly liked her brisket and grilled onion taco).  There were lots of beautiful wildflowers, waterfalls, storms, mountain scenery, abandoned mines, and even an old lime kiln (for making cement).  Ah, it was great...

On the road from Cinnamon Pass to Lake City, we ran into the crazy marmot.  For some reason, this marmot – unlike any other marmot we encountered – was almost unafraid of people.  I got to with a couple feet of him, several times in several location.  Here are some other photos of him:

Every day our dogs (Miki and Racer) are having a terrific time while we're four-wheeling. Racer surprised us by being very interested in everything – he's got his head hanging out the window most of the time.  He's especially excited by two things: any moving water (like when we ford a stream or splash through a puddle) and any animal (chipmunks, marmots, deer – doesn't matter).  Miki, on the other hand, is more interested in being with us than in the travel itself.  By being in the back seat, he's with us all day and that makes him very happy.  Both of them, of course, absolutely love being let out for a run!  Today we let them play in a rushing stream.  Race enjoyed this much more than Miki, and here's a few photos of him playing:

Here are a couple of the deer we saw:

We saw the summer cabin we'd like to have (note the suspension bridge linking the parking lot and the cabin!):

Some more scenery from the day:

And finally, the flowers: