The Menominee River...

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, After the Roman Bread and Circuses in Washington...and under the radar...

Back Forty Mine as proposed.  

Just when are we going to learn to stop this?  Will it be when we are all choking to death because of bad air, bad water, or contaminated food?

Oh, yes, if not the Earth, is NOTHING sacred to the white man?

Zinke, on Climate and the fires in California....

The man is a complete dolt but what else can be expected from a Trump administration "Official"?



This is WAY beyond politics.  This is a fight for the survival of  Earth's Biosphere. 
We are one step closer to the brink with this crappy administration that wants to deny climate change is real.  Sadly, we've been brought here by the GREED of some for short term gain.  I will say again, "You do NOT take anything with you except for the sins and the karma.  You OWN them."

There are many reasons for these fires, not the least of which is that we've had an intermittent drought for over 100 years in the state, all with increasing population and encroachments into wild lands in that time.  These assessments are two years old, and we've had two more rainy season that failed since then.

https://ca.water.usgs.gov/california-drought/california-drought-comparisons.html

Ignorance should not be celebrated.  Why does anyone still think this man is anything more than a bad joke?

Tuesday Tails: Flamingo in San Diego (video) and the infamous Cherry Tree Rebellion.

Article about possibly Native Flamingos in Florida 

And, the Cherry Tree Rebellion, in Washington DC...  From HERE

Wednesday Nature walk or was that a prat fall?

Here's a small tale of Nature loving at the local tide pools.

New Year's Day, we were at the super moon super low tide in Solana Beach.  I went out further than I thought was safe, but it was in an area where no one else was. 

Alas...  I only got one shot of this little pool because we were instantly inundated not with the incoming tide, but by about 20 humans who rushed over to see what we had found.  One woman waded into the water with a cell phone and got within inches of the small orange thing in the over hang.  I waited patiently for the crowd to disperse but it only grew bigger.  With my shaky leg and slippery surfaces, I almost got knocked down by a tiny, adorable human, whom I thought was a dog shoving through.  She grabbed the back of my leg to keep her balance and I almost lost mine.  I just "folded up my tent" and slipped away....
So, my advice is to go, if you are close enough, on a non holiday week day....

Early Tuesday Tails... Sunday Stills at NatGeo UPDATED with a warning.

Just in case you missed this sort of Viral photo......

I'm not happy with this LINK TO SOURCE PAGE AT NATGEO 
and when you get there, you'll understand why. Adware.. sheesh

Tuesday Tails: Big Money VS the Cunning and Deadly Wolves, AS IF!... Knitting, Wolfie, and Tort report and a Skywatcher Post

The big money boys are rolling out their Big Moolah against the few remaining wolves, AGAIN.    Maybe it's because now that it's illegal, hunters still have a great market for all lupin pelts but hate to be classed as criminals?  Could that be it?

Anyway, the Earth absolutely needs the wolves to keep the Elk herds healthy and the Mule deer in check, something that hunters aren't really saying is THEIR first priority for killing either of those two ungulates.

Here's the Gauntlet- I'm throwing it down!  If you don't eat it or it's not eating humans, don't kill it just for the fun.

My Grandfather would hate what's going on now, and he was a hunter.  He never hunted from an airplane.  He did it the old fashioned way and for the old fashioned reason, to get meat to eat during the winter, and rabbits for the pot during the rest of the year.  He fished to eat, like most fishermen, but they are a different sort of folk.

Bring it, Mz. Sarah!  This is my rant but I'll let you have a run at it, too.

Lovers of  Where the Wild things Are!  Please join in?
  Wolves Under Attack -- Tell Obama to Use His Veto


Knitting report:
I got past the first row of patterns on the sleeves, but had to rip back because I just can't knit them both together on one circ without everything going all caddywompus, pear-shaped, or escew.  I'll stick to straights for these little sleeves.  A picture within the week of the progress.

Tort Report:  With temps returning to below 95°F again, the babies have been able to stay outside.  It was 91 two days ago but it's climbing back up so they came in again yesterday and probably today if the forcast is right.
These two little buddies are getting almost big enough to hibernate but it will take a couple more years of keeping them up all year to make certain they can survive it.  I hope the tomato plants that hang down don't kill the adults but I'm not as happy go lucky as Mr. Z about it.  Churchy's almost as old as I am!  I don't want him to die!

Wolfie report:  The little guy is slowing down.  He sleeps more.

Loves Cuddling:

And, he still enjoys his walks, and he loves, LOVES, going for rides:

He loves his food and  treats!

Annnd, he would enjoy going to the beach and probably will get to do that now that sanity has returned within the municipal code, and the crowds are gone.

Dogs can now be on the beach if they are on a leash, in some places.  He LOVES the beach and plays like a puppy when he gets to go there.  One of the other rules is that you must pick up after your dog. We always pick up after him.  I have a purse full of tiny plastic bags. We're good.

Skywatcher:

Ice Clouds two Sundays ago

Gotta Skeedaddle!

Tuesday Tails: Gray Wolves in remote areas of Northern Cal.

Good News for re-balancing nature:

I put this together from another source, since the comments, as always, were trolled at the original site.  I find it hard to believe that the Big Money Boys can't leave any stone unturned in their fight to tweak news events, attempting to make them go their way.

What ever became of Nobility of Spirit?

Center for Biological Diversity

No. 789, Aug. 27, 2015

From an article originally published in the L.A. Times

After Almost 100 Years, a Gray Wolf Pack Lives in California

Shasta Pack in California.

"Exciting, inspiring news from Northern California: For the first time in almost a century, a family of gray wolves is living wild in the state. In remote Siskiyou County, a trail camera has captured a series of photographs of both the adult wolves and the black pups.

The two adult, black-furred wolves and five 4-month-old pups have been named the Shasta pack, after the area's spectacular volcano.

Thanks to foresight and pressure from the Center for Biological Diversity and our allies that resulted in state action in 2014, these wolves have the benefit of legal protection under California's Endangered Species Act. According to state biologists, one or more of the animals will soon be radio-collared for monitoring; in the meantime, their black color should make it virtually impossible for any hunters to claim to mistake them for coyotes -- and very difficult for any actual mistaken ID to occur."

Amazingly Brave.....

See More Tanker Runs here

This Photo is from the Corona Fire Department's team. C/o SuzieQz

For some *#$% reason, Wolves are Under Attack -- Please Call Your Representative Now

The following is a link to the Center for Biological Diversity site.

Wolves Under Attack -- Call Your Representative Now

A couple of weeks ago, a Red Wolf female with pups was shot and killed.  We need to stop the apex predator, the human male, and of course Sarah Palin*,  because wolves are important in so many ways to a healthy ecosystem for all the other creatures that we presumably care about.  Once these wolves are gone, they are gone for good, they are gone, baby, gone.

As one poet put it, speaking of the Bengal Tiger - and I must paraphrase because the old brain cells don't remember who wrote it - that it will take a new heaven and a new earth before the likes of it's beauty will ever be seen again under the sun.


*  She also has a lot to say about how California can solve it's water problems, but that's not available for wide distribution for less than $99 a month.  Yes, she has a cable channel, so that you can never stop hearing her opinions.  Isn't technology great?

Thankful Thursday: Stop BLM's Plan to Double Off-road Traffic in West Mojave; Also Obama's attack on the Endangered Species Act.

I am thankful for the small army of activists and the Organizations that keep their eyes on issues and don't let anyone build smoke screens about important Environmental problems...


Stop BLM's Plan to Double Off-road Traffic in West Mojave

Want more?  Obama, for whatever reason, has been busily weakening the Endangered Species Act.

Read more about this from a PDF from the Center for Biological Diversity:

PDF called Cutting the Safety Net

To all the people willing to fight off road vehicles to save habitat for the endangered California Desert Tortoise, you have my heartfelt thanks.

Never think someone out here doesn't care that you give so much of your time and talents to this good fight.

Shame on you Mr. Obama.

Stop the Navy's Plan to Bomb a Pacific Paradise

Stop the Navy's Plan to Bomb a Pacific Paradise

Tell Top Obama Officials to Meet With Tribes Over Grizzly Protection

Native Americans inhabited the North American Eco System for at least  20,000 years, and the environment was kept healthy because these peoples, 500 Nations,  had sustainable habits.

 It's time we started listening to a people who could achieve that sort of success on a huge continent. They deserve to be listened to.  Please add your voices to help them save an animal that is iconic to this land.  The Grizzly Bear's ancestors have been here for 200,000 years.

Tell Top Obama Officials to Meet With Tribes Over Grizzly Protection

We're in it California......Mandatory Water restrictions time table... It's long overdue.

It makes me wonder why, too.

I don't see how three ten minute periods of sprinkling a week will keep a tree alive.  That said, I'm going to do my very best.  We got rid of a lawn years ago.

I'm going to try to water my three biggest plants with with harvested shower and bath water on the days off, with a drip system that is made by poking one small hole in both the lid and the bottom of jugs and sitting them a little ways out from the trunks.  Hot needles - discarded sewing machine needles - do this job perfectly.  This is not so pretty but it's effective.

I learned this trick working at the Audubon booth at the County Fair one year before the 1985-91 drought hit.

Fellow Californians, I feel your pain.  Now I think I'll just go knit a little on the sweater.

Migratory Birds may just get a break, and saving water around the house for use on plants.

With such a dry year, or actually a series of drought years, migratory birds are having a bad time on the Pacific Flyway.  But with a deal brought about by Nature Conservancy, with a lot of help from Audubon and other partners, and of course the farmers, disaster for the birds may be averted.

Read about it HERE

Farmers have also been partnering to try to save habitat for the quickly declining  Tri Colored Blackbird, a sub species of Red Winged Blackbird.  The Tricolored is crashing, with numbers down 40% since 2011.

This is very exciting because all of a sudden there is some hope in the mix of other news.  I think this will work if everything goes according to plan.  Of course, as long as the drought is running, the field flooding may have to continue.  There are an unbelievable number of farm fields laying fallow along the Central Coast.
When we drove up there last month we did see huge new acreages of wine grapes but there are problems ahead for those as well.  Please read about water problems ahead for the vineyards HERE

Nearly all the lands the vines now occupy were formerly ranch lands.  The ranch lands formed good forage for small animals on which Redtailed Hawks, Merlins and other raptors, coyotes and the occasional Bobcat made livings.  Mice, cottontail Rabbits, etc, sharpened their skills of survival while dodging death from the air or from the land.  But that's a different story.   Despite the fact that these vineyards are another form of desert for all species of wildlife, winged or quadrupedal, there has been very little amelioration made for the habitats destroyed, and this is so even with all the additional stresses and problems made worse by drought.

THIS LINK goes to  the United States Drought Monitor site  for a good look at what's happening and why it is so VERY important to save bath, shower and dish washing water for watering plantings.  HERE is a list called Wise Water Use PDF, and save gray water.  You can water your potted plants with it.  I have a lot of pots and that is how I'm doing it.

Good night, and good luck!  Let's keep water out for the birds, too.  I get a TON of species by just providing cover and cool water, with a bit of forage.  They check out the roses and citrus every single day.

Ohio Diversity Blog

If you like nature blogs,  this blog is one of the very finest. 

I spent time in the fields and woods of my grandparents' farm in Ohio, and remember some early lessons on what to eat and what not to eat in the woods and along the seasonal creek on my grandparent's property.  So I've got a long standing interest in Ohio's woodlands, plants and animals. 

My young aunts and older second cousins were fairly good wild harvesters, so we ate wild onions and celery in the woods on our "camp outs- my 12 year old relatives were Girl Scouts.  We ate some other things, too.  Spices were some of those things we gathered, if I remember correctly.

I was small (4 and a half years old)  and don't remember beyond those few things.  But I do remember berries of some sort that grew in big clumps, tiny, delicious berries in big, dangling clusters.  My grandmother, a McCoy as well as a native of the Cumberland Gap area of Virginia, was also wild foods enthusiast,  and she had transplanted one of these plants to her chicken yard.  They were Elderberries.  (I just did a search.)

Anyway, until just recently, I ate wild foods, too.  Many nice, edible weeds grow in my back yard, and when DH went out of town, I ate them with noodles or eggs.  that is because I've stopped cooking.  DH doesn't cook things from back there, sadly.  Chick weed and wild dandelion are delicious, as are lamb's quarter and mallow if you get them very young.

I want you to enjoy this blog from Ohio, so I stole this photo as a enticement to go take a longer look:

Sunday School and Sunday Matinee

Sunday Matinee this week is the documentary called "Happy".  It chronicles a 30 +  year study of "happiness";  It is about why people are happy instead of depressed even when, by all measures, they shouldn't be happy.

The findings are very informative, especially since Americans are generally an unhappy people, according to most measures of true happiness.  I think it's VERY worth watching. 

 The Linkie  to "Happy".  Watching it made me, well, Happier!

 Sunday School:

On the other side of the coin, we have money grubbing.

Herein lies a little lesson in why we can't make it unless everyone pays their fair share?

LINKIE to Nation of Change article on just how much money the super rich have avoided paying, and why it makes a big freaking difference.

This might be to radical for a some of you but maybe this is right?

Oh, and the Global Banking System just keeps raking it in, too.  We are about to enter a very shady Brave New World.  We can beat them at this game, but it will take local trading of goods.  A village, you know?

Now, to fight back!  We have heated water with solar since 1984, but there is lots more to do.

I grabbed a badge from 350BrighterPlanet.com  after having seen it at Elephant's Eye Blog, which is a fabulous place!  Mosey on over and have a gander at the flowers and stuff of South Africa.

A Little Jeepin' off the main roads.

Dh and Wolfie went up the back side of the massif ( I say this jokingly, since these tiny "mountains" are more hills than massif though they are the roots of what were some very tall mountains in ancient times); anyway, they went up the back side of one of the peaks that shares a ridge with Cowles Mountain.

The waterfall

Upper Portion of the falls, with Graffiti shopped out.  Yay!

Lower portion of the little falls

Afterward we drove up an unimproved road to the trail head, so that I could see the small water fall there.

I took pictures of black sage salvia mellifera , Chamise (fifth down from top at the link) and buckwheat .

I list these in links so that you will know what they really look like after my sort of strangely ethereal snaps.  It was misting the whole time we were on the trail.

Salvia

Chamise Bush

Buckwheat

The wonderful thing about all these plants, plus THIS ONE called California Everlasting (one that I didn't get a picture of) is that they are food for butterflies, hover flies, and bees, amongst other small creatures. This last one also makes Wolfie smell just like maple syrup when he comes home. Yummy!

While we were sleeping, or otherwise distracted...

Actually, Food and Water Watch.org has been sending emails to sign petitions to members for about a year now but this is from a different source.  If you want to not be shocked or surprised at what the bad news day user's guide calls, "Stealth Regulation", you could subscribe to them HERE.  The thing is that  President Obama can still stop this.  I only hope he has the courage to do it.

This is from an article on the  Fire Dog Lake  site, thanks to a headsup from Mz M.  :

"In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and “seed purity,” gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the “conditional deregulation” of Monsanto’s genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa.  Beyond the regulatory euphemism of “conditional deregulation,” this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.  . . .

In exchange for allowing Monsanto’s premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants “compensation.” In exchange for a new assault on farm workers and rural communities (a recent large-scale Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers’ and rural residents’ risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto. In payment for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil’s crucial ability to provide nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous greenhouse gases (recent studies show that Roundup devastates essential soil microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the Biotech Bully of St. Louis to agree to pay “compensation” (i.e. hush money) to farmers ' for any losses related to the contamination of his crop.' ”

Climate Bill YouTube.

Ok, here's another LINK, but the EPA was asking that this is taken down, so it might still disappear.

Here is another LINK to the Op Ed at the Washington Post.

And another LInk to an open letter on this that was written May 4th 2008, on the Carbon Fee's web site.

PS: I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this. I wonder who's going to benefit - and that is all short term benefit - if this thing doesn't work. I think I'll start wearing plaids and stripes together in protest or something... Thank you Albert, thank you very much.

A tumbled sea of jellies...

 

DD2 took this picture at the Aquarium in Monterey Bay. If you get a chance to go there, stop an spend some time with these beautiful creatures.