
Roof angles are tricky!

Roof angles are tricky!

I sat in the garden and sketched in the four cardinal directions. Not pictured: the Anna’s hummingbird on the bougainvillea.
I live on USA’s west coast, but the coastline actually runs east-west here, so the ocean is to the south of us. It was interesting how the sky colour was so different in each direction (this was done mid-afternoon.)
In the top image, those are not two electric poles. The one to the left is a raptor pole that K built. It gets good use by owls!

Large milkweed bugs are seed-feeders; their main diet is, not surprisingly, milkweed seeds. So I’m not sure what this lady was doing on the sweet potato vine.

The cabbage whites (Pieris rapae) are all over my brassicas, of course, but I’m also seeing them in the Park and on ornamentals in the neighbourhood. They seem to especially like purple lantana flowers. Do they also lay their eggs on the plant? Do their larvae eat the leaves, as they do my kale?
On the subject of lantana, it’s highly invasive where I‘m from. It covers an estimated four million hectares in eastern Australia, often to the exclusion of wildlife, people and livestock. So it’s taken me a long while to get used to seeing it as a cultivated garden plant here in Southern California.
Eat up, cabbage whites—lantana not kale!


I have many beloved trees at Malibu Creek State Park; this young-ish valley oak near the amphitheater is definitely one of them. It’s been a while since I sketched it.

The papalo I planted two months ago has grown to about half a metre tall, and is flowering. It’s an annual, so I’d better eat more of it before it dies!

Today’s art prompt was egg. A spore’s kinda like an egg, right?

Some more additions for our Park-specific field guide to use on school walks.

After many months without a working cell phone — it wouldn’t hold a charge for even a minute — I finally got a new battery in it today. Voila! I can unplug and it stays charged! New life for the 8 year old phone! Certain friends are going to be very happy about this. You know who you are.