In Praise Of Our Bear’s Breeches

“Acanthus mollis, commonly known as bear’s breeches, sea dock, bearsfoot or oyster plant, is a herbaceous perennial plant with an underground rhizome in the genus Acanthus.” — Wikipedia Our dependable patch did something very unusual this time around in sprouting its leaves in November. Typically it doesn’t emerge from the otherwise barren soil at the …

SuperDooper Moon

I tend to not get caught up in the “supermoon” hype. I think every full moon is a super moon, and it seems there’s been a proliferation of announcements of the events in the press (I’d never heard the term until a few years ago) perhaps fueled by social media. Nevertheless at about 6:15pm I …

The Last Orchid

Susan’s company’s move a few months ago had her bringing home a dinged up orchid plant that at the time was just lots of thick, waxy leaves and little hope that the porch environment would be conducive to it flowering. Or so we thought. Maybe it was the excessive heat and humidity. Maybe it was …

Just Chicking

Upon a beam under The highest most point of the eave on the north side of the house has been home to a nest since mid-spring that I’ve seen occupied on at least two separate occasions, but unknown whether any chicks made it out of there alive. This is latest of many attempts over the …

There’s Something About Coyotes

So there was this post recently to the EastsiderLA blog about a coyote trapping this past July in Silver Lake that went horribly wrong. A property owner, reportedly after some sort of  “coyote vs. dog” incident, had contracted with a trapper who set up a snare in hopes of catching the predator. Well, the snare, …

Where The Hell Have I Been And What The Hell Have I Been Doing?

In the 12-plus years I’ve been a-blogging, I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than a week or two without posting SOMETHING. So you can imagine my shock when I saw I’d last been seen here basically more than three weeks ago. The funny thing is, I’ve still been communicating, but mostly on Facebook, which …

First Flight

A small chrysalis found in the backyard dirt a couple weeks ago developed in the safety of our old frogquarium where I placed it, and when I checked it this afternoon found the moth within had emerged: So I popped the top and just managed to catch it on camera before it lifted off. This …