Bugs

There were plenty of mosquitos in the Sierra. I had countermeasures.


Fortunately, mosquitoes weren't omnipresent.  More pleasant critters abounded:

Kings Canyon

I take a lot of photos when I backpack but then the question is what to do with them. I guess I'll share a few.

This looks like Paradise Valley. We backpacked up it on the outbound leg. At the point I took this photo, we were on the return leg and I finally got to see the valley from a distance.


- Posted from my iPhone

Remember that hot spell we had? II

Recall the heat damaged new garden install at the neighbor's house? It shows no signs of a hard start in life. What you see below are Encelia for the most part, planted because the neighbor requested "sunflowers". What he really wanted is in the background in this photo. Sharing is caring they say.





- Posted from my iPhone

Garden design series at Mother Nature's Backyard

There's been a lot of information posted over at Mother Nature's Backyard blog since I last visited.  Mother Nature's Backyard is particularly relevant to me, since they write about California native plant gardening in back yard location mere miles from my house.

To my chagrin, it was dropped from my list of blogs to visit regularly.  However, in a way it's fortunate that I've gone so long without a check in since they are now on part 11 of a garden design series that I think is quite insightful, giving me plenty of reading and thinking material to digest in one go.  I might have found it frustrating to wait for the installments if I were following along, so perhaps it's a lucky thing that I was able to catch the design series late in the game. I'm not quite through with it, but it seems thorough so far - more like approachable class material than a casual blog post. No specific author is listed, but I suspect that Dr. Connie Vadheim (CSU Dominguez Hills) is the main author of the design series, so it should be no surprise that the series is as thorough as it is. 

So far as I can tell, they don't have a stand alone table of contents to the design series, so here is one:

http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2013/07/designing-your-new-california-garden-1.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2013/07/designing-your-new-california-garden-2.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2013/08/designing-your-new-california-garden-3.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2013/09/designing-your-new-california-garden-4.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2013/11/designing-your-new-california-garden-5.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2013/11/designing-your-new-california-garden-6.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2013/12/designing-your-new-california-garden-7.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2014/01/designing-your-new-california-garden-8.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2014/02/designing-your-new-california-garden-9.html (Part 1)
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2014/03/designing-your-new-california-garden-9.html (Part 2)
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2014/05/designing-your-new-california-garden-10.html
http://mother-natures-backyard.blogspot.com/2014/06/designing-your-new-california-garden-11.html