We visited Redding last weekend, for a stay at the Gaia Hotel in Anderson. Please visit my other blog, Foolery, to read about that.

Here are some photos of the Sundial Bridge, Redding's most prominent feature these days and one of the architectural and engineering jewels of Northern California. If you haven't seen this bridge in person, try to get here. It's truly spectacular.

Hello, Bridge Zamboni Guy. That's what I will call you. That's what I want to do for my next job.

Santiago Calatrava, the designer of the Sundial Bridge, has given Redding quite a gift in this bridge. Please come see it.

(Posted simultaneously here and at Foolery)

On my way home from work tonight I saw a hot air balloon. We see them a lot in September, early on weekend mornings. Other than that we don't ever see them, so this was a rare treat.

I saw the balloon again after I picked up Smedley from dance class. It hadn't moved too far up the valley; the wind was very light. I walked into the house and promptly forgot about the balloon.

It was Sparky who saw the balloon after dinner, nearly two hours after I had first seen it. "I'll have to call you back," I told my friend Gubby. "I have to go find a balloon."

About two miles away the balloon dominated a local pasture. "Hey, that's Becky's pasture!" I told the girls. "Who's Becky?" they asked. I can see I need to get out to see the neighbors more often.

Here is a photo pictorial of the balloon as it was carefully deflated and put away. The balloon in its bag was about as big as a beanbag chair. The whole process was very elegant and took under half an hour.

I'm pretty sure this heralds the end of winter and the coming of spring.

Winter skies are usually more interesting than summer skies in Northern California. That's because in winter we have precipitation, in theory. In summer, which lasts from April through October, we are drier than a Utah county.

Drier than a Dick Cavett/William F. Buckley interview.

Drier than the skin on the backs of my hands right now. Yeah, that dry.

Make no mistake about it, the rain that has been washing over us in sheets the last few days is beyond welcome and sorely needed. And the skies have been wondrous. Here are a few pictures from a thunderstorm that passed through a couple of weeks ago.

I played with the color just a tad, but not too much.

I took this one and the one that follows on my knees out the dirty dining room window. Even so, the sky was drenched in color, which I didn't mess with at all.

This last one was taken Friday morning. I was in my car, hand on the shifter, engine running, when I noticed how beautiful the view through the garage door was. No adjustment of your screen is necessary; the garage is crooked.

I have to remember days like these during our seven-month summers.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was about as beautiful a day as there ever was, and, since the girls and I had the day off, I took them up to Black Butte Lake for an hour. Here are a few photos, because we have to celebrate beauty when we see it here in Orland.

This was the only boat we saw on the lake that day. We were atop the dam at the observation overlook. If only my photo of Mt. Shasta had turned out -- it was quite visible, even in the low haze and clouds to the north.

I have taken so many photos of this tree and picnic table, that I think maybe I should sponsor their upkeep (shhhhhh, you didn't hear me say that).

Oh yeah -- this one, too.

I kinda like this one. Something so personal about an oak tree.

Just down this hill is the marina. Can't be too much happening down there during a winter when the water is low.

This lonely specimen doesn't get as much attention, but since I was standing in the playground at that moment, hearing nothing but "lookit me, Mama! Lookit me!" I rather appreciated this guy's solitude.

Also, you need to be very, very thankful I don't have such a keen interest in weeds.

(Detail from a photo by Gubby; used by permission from said Gubby)

Fireworks shows in our area usually start just before pitch black dark hits. I know this because when I was young I used to stand on the deck facing the Sierras, staring longingly at Chico 20 miles to the east, and watching the fireworks bloom like tiny psychedelic mushrooms on the horizon. Yeah, okay, I was somewhat pathetic, but at least I have learned what time fireworks are supposed to start. So Friday night, after eating dinner and cleaning up, we rushed to get to the fireworks show in time.

We needn't have rushed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Park had ample space left to stake our claim, and so we did. We people-watched. Two guys had a football and were throwing spirals over our blanket, nearly decapitating me on only one occasion. There were several frisbee games going, but my favorite were the Frisbee Smokers. They had extra talent, it was clear, each playing frisbee with one hand and pinching a cigarette in the other hand.

All lawn chairs and blankets were pointed toward the fairgrounds, from where the fireworks would be launched. We could hear the noise of the car races, like a hive of angry bees, wafting up from the raceway. Oh yeah, Friday night races. This could be interesting timing.

At around 10:00 we heard the unmistakable sound of fireworks and looked up, hopeful. The crowd realized en masse that we were hearing the sounds of the Chico Outlaws' fireworks show across town. We slumped. Sigh. We had considered parking in view of those fireworks, but it's tricky to get a good view in the old part of Chico, with all the oaks and sycamores blocking the view of the sky.

So we waited out the show, our children losing faith in us as the minutes dragged by. The girls ran around with other little kids and had a blast, in between pouts. It actually got chilly on the field -- imagine! Almost cold, in July, in the North Valley! It's never happened before. So we enjoyed the evening until the toddlers on the field started breaking down, one by one, and anxious parents glowered darkly in the direction of the raceway.

Seven minutes before 11:00, we heard the first PHOONT! and saw the starburst. All was well in Parent Land. We were redeemed in the eyes of our sleepy children.

Somehow, the beauty of spring always seems too garish and obvious when represented photographically -- unless the photos are MINE, of course, in which case the beauty is a bit more elusive.

I took my daughters out for a walk Sunday before last, when the almond trees were in bloom on the west side. The spring wind was the only thing that intruded on an otherwise picture-perfect day. In like a lion, indeed.

A closer look is needed here:

In the background is a pistachio orchard. This tree is a volunteer, growing along the ditch that borders the orchard. But look closer -- see the blossoms? Pistachios are not flowering trees. That's a volunteer almond tree that took root almost on top of the pistachio's trunk. It has wound in and around its host, growing taller than the pistachio to ensure that it gets enough light to survive. Sure, it's spindly, but it's a survivor.

This is its neighbor, a healthy volunteer almond tree. It's beautiful, but not quite as scrappy, somehow. The underdog is usually the favorite here in America.

The field just north of us will probably be in corn again this year, but for now it's a carpet of green velvet. The wind has driven a few stray pieces of junk into view, but I'm not adept enough with Graphic Converter to get rid of them. Eh, it's all part of the scene anyway.

This much put-upon old oak tree has been routinely carved upon by years of utilities workers trying to keep the lines clear of branches. I'm not showing you the butchering this tree has been subjected to (for good reason -- I'm a realist and not at all against the linemen doing their jobs; I'm just giving you a bit of the California Tree-Hugger that hibernates within me). I just want to show you its grace.

These baby trees stand a chance at a long life, since they are back far enough from the road not to be a danger to traffic.

Happy spring, ya'll.

Living out on the flat alluvial plains of the north valley -- farm country -- we get our share of wildlife. Opossums, skunks, rabbits and squirrels represent the Cute 'n' Fuzzies; hawks, owls, and the occasional golden eagle represent the birds of prey; egrets, great blue herons, ducks, pheasants, quail, doves, wild turkeys, and even a tired Canada goose or two, make up the Meals On Wings contingent. Foxes and coyotes keep the Cute 'n' Fuzzy population in check, and buzzards are there to clean up after everybody.

Animals we don't see very often, surprisingly, are deer. We live pretty close to a creek, and there are lots of deer there, but they usually stay near the water and close to thickets where they're safe. Half a mile is just too far to go for big risk and small gain.

Until recently. Four times this week I have seen a doe and two half-grown fawns -- never on our property, but in one of the adjacent fields. Twice they have run out in front of my car in the twilight. Deer are lovely, but not known for their superior intellect.

I'm seriously thinking about knocking on doors on my street to warn the neighbors of this new incursion, because the deer look like they're here to stay for a while, and nobody needs a head-on collision with a deer. Leastwise, the deer. I'm willing to risk being the neighborhood busybody for the sake of the deer, and because I, too, am not known for my superior intellect.

That will bring us back to DOE.

Whatever isn't tied down is blown away. Whatever is anchored by gravity is slowly subsumed by Nature.

She's a hungry beast. This was once a hay barn in the middle, with calf pens on each side, each "wing," as it were. That's the doorway of one calf wing, nearly covered over by grape vines.

It's hard to see, but there is a fence under all these grape vines. Probably not for long.

This marsh, just to the north of us, gets bigger every year. Pretty soon the frogs will be in our bathroom.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and apparently the unused silos were just big empty pains in the hiney to Nature; She's brought in the big guns to remedy the situation: fig trees.



Fig leaves are large and showy. I understand why Adam and Eve favored them.

These wasps are retarded. Who would build a nest on a diesel tank, especially the side facing the rain? Well, at least no one will ever set their nest ablaze. No one smarter than a wasp, anyway.

I have more pictures, but it takes me forever to post these with dial-up. Now that our water heater debacle is over, I am slowly getting back to normal again (in relative terms, of course).

Terrible photography courtesy of Yours Truly. Hey, what do you want for four dollars?

Saturday and Sunday were crisp mornings, even with the gluey gray cloud cover. The girls and I were invited over to Grandma and Grandpa's for breakfast Saturday (poor Chas works weekend mornings and always misses Mom's breakfasts). So I hustled the girls out of their jammies, steered them away from their favorite party clothes, and finally badgered them into their play clothes.

While walking down the road I idly scanned the west horizon and was startled to see a hot air balloon. "Quick, girls -- over to Grandma's! We can see it so much better from the dining room!" This wasn't just a cheap ploy to get some coffee in a hurry -- the view from the breakfast table really was better. There were two balloons, gliding north just to our west.

Each summer about this time, when the weekend mornings are cool and the winds are light, we can expect to see a few balloons drifting up from Bayliss in the south. (One year when I was young there was some kind of balloon race with many, many balloons. We were delighted to see them go right over the ranch, but we watched in horror as a balloon downed in the field just northeast of us, missing a power substation by yards. The wind came up with violence just as the balloon neared the nest of high voltage wires, but the pilot managed to cheat death and all ended well.)

Over breakfast my dad explained to the kids the finer points of hot air travel, a lecture I had just given twenty minutes before, had he (or they) been listening. "What are you -- TWINS?" I'm sure they were thinking, noses wrinkled in childish annoyance.

Sunday I was awakened by Smedley extolling the finer points of something inane -- ha ha, she got me back -- at 6:30 a.m. "Gimme a while longer," I mumbled, and by now Sparky was awake, so the two happily galloped off to play Something Inane. But the phone ringing just before 8:00 sealed my fate, and I lumbered to the desk to answer the phone in my best "of course I've been awake and productive since dawn" voice, because I knew ahead of time that it was my mother. "There's another balloon -- come on over, if you want."

"GIRLS! Get your shoes on -- we're going over to Grandma's to see more balloons!" As I hollered this in the general direction of Inane Headquarters, I happened to look outside -- and there was a blue balloon, right there. Much closer than it would have been at Grandma's.

"Never mind! Just come outside!" I yelled. I was mostly dressed, but I did take the time for pants, which was a good plan, since you can only assume they have binoculars in those balloons. The balloon was moving away fairly quickly, but we had a good view. Sparky wanted to get closer, but both girls were barefoot, and the driveway is full of stickers, so we stayed on the sidewalk.

"I don't even care that I'm in my undies," Smedley confided. "If they look at me, they'll probably just notice my smile, anyway."

Just then I noticed a rainbow balloon, obviously put down on the ground, just beyond the ranch's western border. It rose up a few minutes later, but struggled against the rising air temperatures. It never caught up with its blue travel companion.

We watched for a little while longer, until the mosquitos and the promise of Kix drove us indoors. Even rare beauty has a shelf life.