Baby Karyn at San Francisco Beach
OPINIONHEAD
Friday, February 04, 2011
Happy Birthday Karyn!
Baby Karyn at San Francisco Beach
Monday, January 03, 2011
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Thursday, December 23, 2010
...And a Very Happy New Year
How perfect! After days of biblical proportion storms, we saw this double rainbow outside our back door and decided to consider it a very good omen for 2011.We weren't at all good about sending cards this season, so we're sending this beautiful rainbow to all our friends and family. Wish we could be with each and every one of you this Holiday, but if what's in our hearts counts, we're SO there!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Fishin' and Bloggin'
The weather has been increasingly hot (and even humid) this past few days, so I was not surprised to discover I had overslept yesterday. I woke up about 9:30, and as I had to leave for work an hour later, I hurried to the kitchen for the first cuppa Joe, and wondered idly why Karyn hadn't sent the hounds in to awaken me. As I entered the kitchen, some movement in the family room caught my eye. I stopped dead in my tracks at the exact same minute I saw a man sitting in one of the leather club chairs and Karyn shouting out "Good Morning, it's Uncle Nick---are you dressed?"
After hugs and kisses and lots of laughing I said to Uncle Nick,"I'm not gonna lie---I was somewhat surprised (uh...totally thunderstruck!) to find a man in my living room."
"There's no sin in lyin' when it comes to fishin' and...now, bloggin'."Not a problem for Uncle Nick. He looked at me sternly, raised his hand, and said:
Friday, July 30, 2010
Fire Update 4:30 pm PST 7/30/10
Update 5:35pm: We were NOT evacuated, and it looks like the DC-10 that was brought in to drop massive amounts of fire retardant really did its job. We were in the middle of what was meant to be a nap, after last night's exhausting fire vigil, when the amount of fire-fighting air power overhead woke us up, making that nap a 20-minute descent into what sounded like Viet Nam. The California Aqueduct is just on the other side of the hill behind us, and those pilots were zooming in and out of there like race car drivers with wings.
So, we're fine, but now we know that until they get this fire fully under control, the vicissitudes of the famous Antelope Valley wind is a game changer that no one can predict.
Joshua: Enduring Symbol of High Desert
We're OK, But Lazy T Ranch Is Not!
All Fire Photos: AP Photos/Dave Mills
2 A.M. Update: All Safe From Fire
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Video of Fire Near Us
SoCal Fire Report: Raining Smoke
Saturday, July 03, 2010
New Staff Photographer: Meet Kimberly
Summer Redecorating
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Google Docs and Some Help From My Friends
Friday, June 04, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
High Desert Snow: Day and Night
Monday, December 07, 2009
The Book She is Complete!
Friday, October 09, 2009
A Different Bird in Paradise?
The photo above is supposed to be Impatiens psittacina, also called the Parrot Flower, at least on the Internet. It is, allegedly, a rare, endangered species, native to northern Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and northern India. Apparently it is a Federal crime in those countries to attempt to export either the flower or the seeds. Wondering if anyone has actually seen one of these beauties in person?
According to numerous sources, which are apparently quoting from an unnamed original source, "The Impatiens are part of a morphologically diverse family, called Balsaminaceae, which has about a thousand representatives that are mainly distributed in the tropics and subtropics. The family Balsaminaceae consists of only two Genera: Hydrocera and Impatiens."
Impatiens is by far the largest and inhabits all continents except South America and Australia. Hydrocera has only one species confined to tropical Asia. One of the features that separates Impatiens from the rest of the plant kingdom is the explosive nature of the seeds. Through a process knows as 'explosive dehiscence,' the ripe seed pods explode under extreme pressure when disturbed, scattering the seeds far and wide, sometimes more than twenty feet from the parent plant.
The flower shapes of impatiens come in many different forms, and all have the ability to change sex. When an impatiens flower first opens it is male and after a few days this pollen cap is shed to reveal the female organs underneath. This evolutionary safety net is to keep the plant from self-pollination but it doesn't always work. Some species naturally set seed without even opening their flowers; this is called being cleistogamous. Some of the species have even gone one step further in that it is self-sterile and needs another of the same species in order to set seed.
Self-pollination, it seems, can weaken the species. After a combination of checking with this handy site and the ever helpful Google, I found one poster who found this:
"Evolutionary biologists and population ecologists view this mixed breeding system as a highly successful strategy for producing genetically diverse new plants from chasmogamous flowers and other new plants very similar to the parental genotypes from cleistogamous flowers. The mixed breeding system is found in many distantly related plant families and has recently been proposed as a vehicle for containment of transgenic modifications in plant groups where it could be induced. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this fascinating system have never been investigated."
Wow---and I thought I had just found a pretty picture! Nature is amazing---a flower that can change its sex, shoot its seeds out into the world like a canon shot and trys to protect itself from self-pollination with trickery that sometimes backfires. Sounds a lot like humans!
But is the flower above real? Does it actually exist in the world...or just in a clever person's photo manipulation? This person sure does go to a great deal of trouble to convince his readers that the flower, as seen above, is real. In 1901, Botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker wrote an entry for Kew Gardens about Impatiens psittacina, and it was accompanied by a drawing shown at the bottom of the linked page. If you look at the drawing and then the closeup of one section of the drawing...hmmmm.
Are you convinced? I'm skeptical, but I have a friend who has a friend who knows a botanist from Down Under....Help!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Happy Birthday to Ann
Friday, September 11, 2009
Update on (Clunker) Jimmy (Jack)
Well, Jimmy is recuperating, and he has a new home with our vet tech, Cathy. Despite beginning to fall in love with Jimmy over the 55 hours he spent with us, we weren’t really prepared to have another animal at the time Jimmy appeared, but we knew we’d keep him long enough to make sure he would live.
He is happily ensconced at the home of our vet tech, Cathy, who Jimmy met Tuesday morning when he was taken to our regular vet for a thorough examination. Whenever we picked him up, his skin would crackle, and he seemed to tire very easily. Still, for the three days we had him, he ate regularly, tried to befriend the not very resilient Pugs, and was generally a love and a good boy---very polite, very, very sweet.
The doctor thinks that Jimmy might have a small hole in one of his lungs, and he could require a great deal of special medical care, medication and possibly surgery to get back to normal. Certainly he will have more tests. As we already have one special needs child in the person of The Dolly Lambi, two seemed more than we could take on at this time. (Dolly was paralyzed in her hind quarters at age four by hyper extending her body on her back legs trying to get some food off the kitchen counter {so very pug-like}, and although her paralysis was not permanent, the damage from it was, and she wobbles on her back legs, is very unsteady, and is in need of being watched at all times).
But, the the main consideration was where would Jimmy get the very best treatment and care available. The vet tech would be able to provide that to Jimmy at a fraction of the cost (possibly free, except for meds), and best of all, she and her husband have been placing strays in loving homes for years. In fact, just the week prior, she placed a dog that looks very much like Jimmy with a lady in her church.
However, to make sure Jimmy wasn’t some nice person’s little love, the Doctor scanned his chip. It turns out that his given name was Jack, but the phone was disconnected. Further investigation revealed the street he lived on is in a very bad area, and we suspect that given the distance from us, he was most likely dumped in a good area, but, after checking all the usual places over the past five days, we can say with certainty that no one is looking for Jimmy. Which, in this case, means no more heartbreak for Jimmy.
Jack is now officially Jimmy, and Cathy reports that he’s off the pain meds, responding very well to the antibiotics, and, best of all, he has been drinking water, which is something he did not do for the first three days. The way we got water into him was intravenously at the ER hospital we first took him to, and by adding water to his meals at home, which he ate and slurped with great gusto.
When we got him, or should I say, when he got us, he was so matted and dirty that we had to cut the burrs and sticks and brambles out of him with a scissors. We gave him a sponge bath, but knew he was too fragile for a full grooming. Yesterday, Cathy the vet tech, decided to give Jimmy a make-over, so he could have a fresh new start, again, so she shaved him, took a picture of him and told him his official name is, in fact, Jimmy. Each day she dresses all his sores and wounds, and by the time we got him to our own vet, he had gained one pound. He was barely six pounds when he found us. Oddly, we called him Jack a few times when trying to guess his name, and he didn’t respond at all. We’re pretty certain that being Jack wasn’t fun, wasn’t a good life. The medical team at the vets felt that given his injuries, Jimmy was abused, possibly by a second owner.
Karyn cried all day after she left Jimmy with the vet tech, but we both knew it was the best decision for everyone, especially Jimmy. Today, we realized something else. It was the story of Jimmy, how he sat outside our gate, ran into her arms, was the best houseguest anyone could hope for and never complained about anything, even being that sick---it’s that story that pulled at our heartstrings so much. We’ve known Cathy for six years, and she is probably the only person in this town to whom we would have entrusted Jimmy. And we know that she is very careful when placing adoptees---she interviews them, checks out the home, really does her due diligence when it comes to placing the four-legged children.
So…Jack became Clunker became Jimmy, and although Cathy has sent us daily reports, we already know that this is going to be a HEA ending. If Jimmy can get his health back, and he is, after all, a survivor, then someone is going to have a wonderful companion, and a lot of love. Already, several people who have met Jimmy want him!
After his make-over, Cathy put Jimmy on top of her car to keep him still while she snapped this photo because her two German Shepherds love him and all they wanted to do was play, and Jimmy is way overdue for some serious play time!
Thanks to everyone who posted and wrote to us about the lovely boy Jimmy. We’ll be sure to post an “After” picture when his hair grows out.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Look Who Showed Up at the Front Gate this Morning
THE DOLLY LAMBI "Tell me this is not another boy."
Teddy Valentine: "No, nothing's wrong. Why?"
Completely matted, with stickers and burrs and dirt everywhere, this little boy with pure white curls stood at our gate and ignored Teddy's ferocious barking and just waited for a kind human being to invite him in. He ran into her arms. He was completely sweet, docile and in some kind of pain. We decided to take him to the Emergency Vet because we knew he wasn't a young puppy, and yet he wasn't fixed. He seemed exhausted, frightened and very hungry. We came to a quick decision. This little personable dog had not been well treated or he was a runaway who had run into some big trouble. He screamed when we touched his back. And we know for a fact that people abandon dogs in the desert area all the time. We've rescued seven lost dogs in the past few years, and they were all happily reunited with their owners. They were all in pretty good shape when they came to our gate....but there was just something about Jimmy....
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Making Progress...and Helping Out
Monday, August 31, 2009
Still Here!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Fire Update: 10:00 p.m., 30 August 2009
Sadly, two firefighters died today when their vehicle overturned fighting the monstrous Angeles National Forest fire. They lost their lives defending the LaCanada/Flintridge area. The fire area closest to us, in Acton, is now being called The Station Fire. As awful as the fires are, it's pretty demoralizing to realize that some of them were arson. The authorities do not think the original source of the fire was arson, but at one point today, suspicious spot fires were popping up all over the various routes located alongside freeways leading to areas of the Angeles National Forest. Some of this area has not burned for 60 years, so it's pretty much a tinderbox.