Grey drizzly day. Waiting at the Park for the Girl Scout troupe to arrive, so I can lead them on a discovery hike. (We had a great time; 8 yr olds are awesome.)
parking lot
Month: March 2025
three new hats
Since the fire, my only hats have been a baseball cap and a beanie. But yesterday I acquired two sun hats and a bike helmet … oh yes, and a bicycle! It’s currently in the shop for a tuneup, but I’m excited to try riding on the Ojai Valley Trail. Also looking forward to hiking with some better sun protection than I was getting from a ball cap. Day by day, life continues to improve 😊
wills-rice loop trail
The Ventura River Preserve is full of hiking trails, and today we traversed a truly lovely one, the Wills-Rice Loop. I’m keen to return throughout the seasons, and also to explore the many offshoots. Fern Grotto is calling my name!
for ellie
Commission for a soon-to-hatch bebe.
guvmnt office
I was told that the reason my social security application has not been processed, ten weeks after lodging it, is because of “staffing cutbacks”.
Quercus agrifolia
The male oak flowers are dangling hopefully, but, as with the walnut flowers I sketched last week, I’m not yet seeing any females following behind. Will keep looking!
Astur cooperii
I know it’s got a striped tail, dark back, yellow legs, and yellow on the top of its bill. But quite a few hawks have these features. (Sketch done from a photo by Ashok Khosla.)
under oak
Fun outing with the Channel Islands Nature Journalers. It was my first time seeing an elfin saddle (Helvella dryophila)! What an interesting-looking fungus.
mud wasps
We had a dinner disaster last night, when the old stove’s exhaust vent suddenly rained a flood of debris down into the skillet of beans and asparagus. Dinner went to the compost, and I remained grumpy for a while. But today I took the cover off the vent and banged the pipe to try to completely clear it. A lot of what emerged was mud wasp nests.
Mud daubers fill their nests with spiders to feed their larvae. Unlike some wasp species that fill a nest cell with one or two large spiders, mud daubers pack up to two dozen smaller spiders into each cell.
To capture a spider, the wasp grabs it and delivers a sting. The venom from the sting doesn’t kill the spider, but it paralyzes and preserves it, allowing it to be transported and stored in the nest cell for later consumption by the larvae. The mud dauber typically lays its egg on the prey before sealing the nest cell with a mud cap. Afterward, the wasp moves on to construct another cell or nest. The young larvae survive the winter inside the nest.
I’ve now sealed up the vent with foil (the exhaust fan is non-operational) so hopefully there’ll be no more dinner mishaps from that direction.
Juglans californica
We hiked in the Boney Mountain State Wilderness, following Sycamore Creek to the waterfall. We searched for newts, to no avail. But it was fun seeing signs of spring, including lots of male flowers on the native walnut trees. No female flowers yet — will be looking out for them!
hashiworks 