A Chaparral Morning

We’ve been going for a walk most mornings — Debbie, myself, and our three field spaniels. The weather has been just gorgeous; the mornings are cool and crisp. In the photo at right, if you click to look at the large version, you can make out the “cage” that my beautiful wife is wearing around her broken ring finger on her left hand. She’s smiling anyway! The dogs are of course their usual happy selves; there is nothing they like better than a walk. From left to right, it’s Miki (our puppy), Lea (the princess), and Mo’i (at the moment, the number one agility field spaniel). You might have noticed the strap across the muzzle of Miki and Lea — that’s a kind of harness called a “Halti”. They’re wearing that harness because they’re BBDs (bad brown dogs) when we’re walking — every time they spot a quail, hear a rabbit, or smell a coyote, they completely lose their minds (and being spaniel owners, we know very well that there’s not a lot of mind to lose!). The result is that we get towed all over the County, through the chaparral and whatever else was in the way. The Halti stops that, without causing any pain to the dog. It’s a clever device — if the dog tries to pull at the leash while wearing it, it pulls the dogs head back toward you. Mo’i is the only GBD (good brown dog) we have on a walk. He rarely strains at the leash; he just plods happily along with us…

One of our favorite local flowering plants — ceanothus — has just popped into bloom. It’s several weeks earlier than usual this year, most likely due to the combination of a drenching rain a couple of weeks ago, and a week of warm weather afterwards.

We have four species of ceanothus that are common locally; two with blue flowers and two with white. Both blue species and one of the white are in bloom right now. One of the blue species' flowers are highly variable in color, ranging from intense, saturated dark blues to much lighter shades; this species has particularly nice foliage as well, with dark green leaves and dark gray bark that both have an interesting texture to them. The other blue species (seen at right) has a much more consistent color, large, smooth lighter green leaves, and a very light, smooth bark. These are often so full of bloom that there is no foliage visible. The white species that’s in bloom now has flower clusters that lie close to larger branches, making an interesting spiky effect.

I’ll leave you with a selection of photos from our walk this morning…