Fairy Houses

Click on the image above
For a close-up view of the lands where the Fairy Folk Dwell

Fairy housing beats ours hands down. The fay folk are the green construction originals when it comes to environmentally 

conscientious

 developments.

• Pefectly permeable pavement - no challenge to the aquifer!
• Edible totally organic roofs and walls reduce the cost of transporting food to the home
• High-efficiency, non-fueled solar lighting
• Totally compostable buildings lead to no-waste, no environmental impact

Hawks Ahead - Hiking Edgewood

My Kind of Study Break

A Red-Tail Hawk, I think.

Using my low-level cell phone camera, and was I glad I had it.

I'd been focusing on learning about what triggers mass wasting. She's was focusing on finding supper.  I think she missed out on her opportunity, as I came around the corner feet away from her in the grass, wrestling with something small and ground-dwelling.


What a reward for studious effort.

Edgewood Shale Once an Ocean?

Edgewood Shale, The ultimate in Time Travel
Ancient Muds Tells Us Still Waters Once Lay Deep Here

California Summertime

Summer time is dry
Baking Edgewood wildflowers
Deep below seeds wait

Friends of Fennel

Please click on the illustration above

to fully enjoy this postcard

I always feel a little guilty when I enjoy this invasive survivor. Fennel is certainly no friend to boosters of the California Native Plant Society, but it's still a gorgeous invader in the scruffier parts of town.

By the Waterfall: Late Blooming Honeysuckle

There are a few stray blooms of honeysuckle blooming in latish June near the waterfall on the Sylvan Trail in Edgewood Park. This is one of my favorite spots for a bit of time travel. You just couldn't find a better time portal than a shady glen like this.

 It's the spot where I took a short trip back to visit with an Ohlone Rumsen family group last fall.

Remember? Here's the story

        - Indian Summer at Edgewood (No. 1) Creekside 

        - Indian Summer at Edgewood (No 2) : Oak Apples

       - Indian Summer at Edgewood (No. 3): Rose Hips

(Co-Published with ...

The Simple Romantic Travels Through Time )

Mariposa: The Time Travellin' Spud

(Co-Published with The Simple Romantic) 

Click on my Jolly Mariposa Lily Illustration Above to Get Up Close and Personal 

With This Native Darling

Mariposa, as I bet you know, is the Spanish word for "butterfly". That was what this beauty's petals, apparently, made some early botanist thing about when they first saw this late spring/early summer flower.

On my morning study break, I took a time travel jaunt back to the middle of the 18'th century. There I found that the native Lamishan (an Ohlone people) think it's equally fanciable as a taste treat.  The group I met up with were digging up the bulbs of this (as we'll as some of the  other local Calochortus). One of the women told me that her cousins up valley usually boil or roast them. Her folks, however, like them fried. The results looked, and tasted, much like what  I do with a friendly spud.