California has its share of ‘issues’… high taxation and tight regulation stifles business… yet these same prohibitors tend to force a work-around solution…. and the end result is that our environment is relatively clean for the tens of millions living in this space, and we have a thriving ‘Underground’ economy.
Red-Hot Chili Peppers sang a couple of good songs mentioning California, one is about California, another is about a girl named Dani California…. Good songs both… enjoy!
Psychic spies from China Try to steal your mind’s elation Little girls from Sweden Dream of silver screen quotations And if you want these kind of dreams It’s Californication
It’s the edge of the world And all of western civilization The sun may rise in the East At least it settled in the final location It’s understood that Hollywood sells Californication
Pay your surgeon very well To break the spell of aging Celebrity skin, is this your chin Or is that war your waging
[Chorus:] First born unicorn Hard core soft porn Dream of Californication Dream of Californication
Marry me girl be my fairy to the world Be my very own constellation A teenage bride with a baby inside Getting high on information And buy me a star on the boulevard It’s Californication
Space may be the final frontier But it’s made in a Hollywood basement Cobain can you hear the spheres Singing songs off station to station And Alderon’s not far away It’s Californication
Born and raised by those who praise Control of population everybody’s been there and I don’t mean on vacation
[Chorus]
Destruction leads to a very rough road But it also breeds creation And earthquakes are to a girl’s guitar They’re just another good vibration And tidal waves couldn’t save the world From Californication
Pay your surgeon very well To break the spell of aging Sicker than the rest There is no test But this is what you’re craving
We live in a long rural canyon. We don’t get many ‘services’ such as DSL and cable… the phone lines were only strung into this canyon in 1972. But things were much worse in the 1920′s when there were only a few families back here…. at that time the creek had to be crossed at several points…. this made it impractical for vehicles…… but the economic calamities of the Great Depression were responded to by a great call-to-action called the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC built many structures in this area… they rebuilt the Lompoc Mission to make it the ‘most well restored Spanish Mission in California’. They also built a half dozen bridges along our tiny public road…… I really like to look at the way the rock was squared to build the strong foundations of the bridges….. it is ‘Old World’ work for sure.
We had some wood on the bridge become destroyed by rot. The county decided to replace the wood before a car fell through (It happened to a truck a few years ago)….
The work crew that came along and did this did a fine job. They were very accommodating concerning the needs of people to travel across the bridge….. they left the old boards in place while they pulled out the large spices that secured them to the structure…. traffic was able to move across when a car came along…. then they closed off the road totally while they picked up the boards and carried them to the side… they brushed, scraped and blew off the debris on the joists, then they placed the new boards down and let me and the few other people who’d come along pass through. I suppose there were perhaps a total of four vehicles that sat and waited for the 15 minutes they had the road totally closed. But it was plain to see that they were keeping road closure to a minimum. Very nice, thanks!
I’ve usually been fairly happy with the amount of work the county does for us. We’re remote, with few people nearby, so we have to expect to wait for services…. but when they do the work, they seem to do a decent job and help us out a quite a bit….
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” ~Mr. Spock, Star Trek
summertime is the fun time….
but it’s not as good at bringing harvest to you as fall is….
and I think life is the same… your summertime is the fun time, fall brings the harvest…
but your wintertime will ask you if you planted well, and harvested fully enough to last through winter.
They like to hop around cactus and other desert brush looking for grubs, ants and other bugs…. sometimes they will supplement their diet with cactus fruit. They like to nest in trees, but will also use large cactus.
Ladder-Backed Woodpecker
The photo above shows a young ladder backed woodpecker in our cactus… from this angle we can see the fine patterns defining the horizontal bands.
This is a little video I made of this woodpecker hopping around the cactus. They are fun to watch as they make many acrobatic moves……
Woodpecker nest in an Agave stalk
A few years ago, our neighbors had a pair nest in this agave stalk……
The agave will throw out this large stalk with flowers in one summer….. after it blooms most people leave the spent flower stalk up for a few years, until they rot and fall down (they are striking plants)…..
Woodpecker nest in an Agave stalk
Here we can see the hole they constructed in the side of the agave stalk… the nest opening faces northwest in this case….. one hole is about four feet over the other one.. both openings facing the same direction……
Ladder-Backed Woodpeckers range through most of Mexico, and much of the US Southwest…. but actually, they are not supposed to be this close to the coast….. but they do seem to like it here.
Eucalyptus trees blocking the oaks and cactus from water and sun
These eucalyptus trees are about forty years old… they have grown to about 75 feet tall, and give too much shade and take too much water to make the cactus happy. And being on a hillside, they would likely fall downhill, and our house is that way…. storms have been making me nervous… but these trees are a bit too large for me to want to cut…. and since they could fall over onto the house, I decided it’s best to bring in the pros. So I called my friends at Expert Tree Service….
tree being winched over to the hillside
We want to keep the oaks behind the eucs… and since the natural tendency of the tree is to fall downhill, for the sake of safety the guys hooked a rope to a small tree up the hill.. then the other end was fastened to the top of the tree to be cut. Along the way the climber must cut limbs to reduce the weight on the side we do not want it to fall. After the notch is cut at the bottom, the winch-man will pull the tree over bit by bit, the saw-man will cut into the back of the tree.. slicing through fibers, as the tree slowly moves over toward the winch…. bit by bit, until it fell uphill, exactly where they wanted them to fall.
If you click on the photo above, it will bring up a larger image, and you can see a fellow is in the top of the tree….
climber in a eucalyptus tree
You can see a fellow up in the tree, climbing it with climbing spurs. You don’t want to use spurs on trees that you’ll keep alive, it injures and scars them. But since these ones are coming down, it is the best and safest way to get up the tree.
A resort under construction in Malibu contacted us and asked for a few hundred cactus cuttings to be planted around the edges of their property, to cover the new shiny fence. They are working their grounds over using bio-dynamic means… and are trying to procure organic materials where they can. Since Malibu is so close, it seemed a fitting thing to just load them into a van and run them down the coast… that way we can give them even larger-than-usual cuttings…
I was VERY impressed with the history of the ranch the spa is being built on. It was connected to a person well-known to people of the world. It has quite a storied past…. even more is the location of the spa itself… high on top of a hill in the Santa Monica Mountains…. with a great view of the sea….. stunning. There’s not much that could make me want to leave this canyon I call home…. the Santa Monica Mountains and Malibu is a sure thing to attract me.
roof condensation
Cactus have little holes to breath through like most other plants…. they are called stomata. Most plants do their breathing in the daytime when the sun is shining and powering the miracle called photosynthesis.. this is when the plants need to exchange their gasses and exchange their waste Oxygen for the Carbon Dioxide they need…. but cactus don’t want to do that on a hot summer day… they’d lose too much water in the dry heat.. so they have a special way to do these.. they keep the stomata closed in the daytime, ’store’ the waste Oxygen in acid packs near the stomata…. and in the nighttime they will open up and exchange the gasses, losing less internal moisture in the cooler moister night air.
But when you cut a thousand pounds of cactus, and set it into a van overnight… all that released water vapor will fill the van.. and when it gets cold, the moisture near the cold metal will condense…. so in the morning the roof was dripping water… and I had to wipe the interior of the windows to see out.
Double-cuttings for Malibu
Since we didn’t have to worry about shipping costs, we were able to give them extra large cuttings. They were really impressed with the cactus, and very enthusiastic… they asked if I’d be willing to come by and look them over on occasion…. yes….. anything to get me to Malibu! And also… this resort is going to be stunning…. they don’t have construction workers doing the work… they have craftsmen and artisans…. the entire place is going to be a massive work of art… and I like art a lot… let me see the painting when it is finished!
People tend to think of California as tanned folks in convertibles… living in beachfront homes… certainly, almost anyone could be forgiven for thinking of that when they hear the legendary name ‘Malibu’…. but Malibu is not only some 27 miles of scenic beachline, it also includes the ‘sphere of influence’ of Malibu for some miles inland…
Here we see the sea from the hills high over Malibu….
rugged hills, steep terrain, very few suitable building sites make for a sparsely populated area…. and so close to the big city….
Just beyond those hills… on the edge of the sea is the town of Malibu… a couple dozen miles of scenic wonder…. and a fitting edge to the nearby Central Coast..just up the strand.
Looking into Malibu from the hills
Come down the hills some.. and the beaches come into view….
There’s so many millions of super-great places to see in the world… I’d love to see them all.. but I’ve only seen some few dozen… one of them is where we live…. and the only other place I think I might like more than our canyon is the Malibu Hills…. I just really like Malibu and the Topanga/Santa Monica area so much. I think it’s the opposites in this instance…. I like the vitality of the city for a very short few hours once in a while…. but nice quite seclusion is really a treasure…. Malibu is nice and quite in the hills… but so close to the energy of Los Angeles.
Looking into Malibu from the hills
Here’s a zoom of the previous photo. Notice how tall the cliffs are by the beach.. this is common for California beaches. Many of the beaches have narrow and steep paths following gullies.. the more difficult to reach, the more seclusion… (a no-brainer I know.. but it’s amazing how so many people will not spend just a little effort for a nice sparsely-populated beach)
Black rocks at Malibu
Untouched photo.. the colors were great.. the black rocks, blue sea and sky, and the green grasses seem light compared to the gray sands.
Point Mugu
This is Point Mugu from the south.
The highway was blasted through the hillside… it used to go around the point… but was very narrow… now there is a very unusual rock that is seen in a few movies and commercials… it really is eye-catching
Tall sand dune at Point Mugu
This is a tall sand dune at Point Mugu State Park… you can try climbing to the top if ya like. I suppose it’s a few hundred feet tall….
It gets so tall because the tall cliffs block the sand from blowing inland… it’s just a happenstance of location and conditions that make this possible.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
“If this were only cleared away,”
They said, “it would be grand!”
“If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
Why does it matter where I live?
In the canyon I can wile away my days.
The sun rises and sets, and I listen
to the soughing breeze in the oaks.
Let others pursue activities and goods,
I will BE, among creation
while the busy world spins faster
so far away
