Central Coast « Rivenrock Gardens Cactus Blog… go to www.rivenrock.com for edible cactus

wild mushroom presentation in San Luis Obispo

https://www.facebook.com/GardensbyGabriel?sk=wall#!/events/105809436206689/

San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden presents a wild mushroom presentation by Dennis Sheridan on Saturday, February 11 from 1pm to 2pm. Join local photographer and mycologist Dennis Sheridan for a discussion on commonly seen mushrooms in our area, the role of mushrooms as decomposers, and the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi relationships mushrooms have with plants. Bring your questions and mushrooms for identification. This is a child-(and adult) friendly talk and there will be hands-on mushrooms to admire at the end of the talk, followed by a mushroom walk through the Garden.

Dennis Sheridan is a naturalist and outstanding photographer who has been a friend of the Garden for years. He has given programs on insects in conjunction with the Natural History Museum and has traveled throughout the world, pursuing his passions of nature and photography.

Presentation is $5 for members/$10 non-members. For more information contact Kristina Van Wert at (805) 541-1400 ext 305 or volunteers@slobg.org.

San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden is located on 150 acres in El Chorro Regional Park off Highway One between Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo, at 3450 Dairy Creek Rd. When the master plan is complete, the Garden will be the only garden of its kind in the United States exclusively devoted to the ecosystems and plants of the five mediterranean climate regions of the world. Through its programs and facilities, the Garden fosters an appreciation and understanding of the relationship between people and nature and encourages a sense of stewardship for the natural environment.

Blck Gold Library System E-accounts

This is a link to the local library system. If you have a ‘Black Gold’ library card you can enter and open an e-account, then you can download e-books for free. These can be used in Kindle, i-pads and probably phones and stuff too. Since before the Library of Alexandria people have tried to get more learning…. avoid extinction, read!

“Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day” ~Zen Saying

“There are three kinds of men. One learns by reading, a few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves” ~W Rogers

Californication

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

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/

Moonrise January 08, 2012

: Moonrise from the neighboring hilltop

: Panorama looking northwest toward San Luis Obispo

: Panorama looking Eastward toward the desert

: moonrise, looking Eastward toward the desert

: Sunset

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth”
~Buddha

The Central Coast is relatively unspoiled….
Although it’s been travelled and lived in for thousands of years…. it still seems very rural
But you can count on the fact that you’re not likely to go anywhere that no one else has ever been….
Unless you’re an extreme climber or diver.

‘Second Hand’
~Bachman-Turner Overdrive~

No reason to get excited
But I feel a change blowin’ in the wind
Everythin’s filled with confusion
So let’s start the world over again
And get it second hand, slightly used, soiled
Get it second hand, carelessly abused, spoiled

I see you’re looking to find new horizons
But there are footsteps everywhere you go
And somebody else has been asunder
The sunshine has wilted and crawls?

I’ll get it second hand, I’m dazed and confused
Turn back the second hand, I pay all my dues
I got rid of my dues and I’m all fixed up
Watch me talk about it,

Second hand, yeah used, second hand
I got it second hand, all used up

Weekend Escape to the Central Coast

We live in a really special place here on the Central Coast of California. We’re close to the big metropolitan cultural centers of Los Angeles and San Francisco… but we’re also a place of isolated beaches, high windswept interior plains, and coastal hills running down into the sea. Do come and visit this area anytime you are in California…. it is superb.

Here’s part of an article written by someone who spent some time here for some of our local food and wine festivals….

“Desperate for a place to get out of town and leave behind the stresses of Los Angeles, I blessedly found California’s Mecca for food & wine lovers, wide-open space cravers, ocean worshippers, hikers walkers & cyclists, art junkies and just lovers: California’s Central Coast & Valley. Recently, I have had the good fortune of attending three food and wine festivals which has allowed me to get to know the Central Coast and enjoy all that it has to offer. Just a short, scenic three hour drive out of Los Angeles, I was transported to a place that felt like I had traveled much farther. Without even noticing, my blood pressure had returned to a normal rate, my muscles had relaxed and an easy feeling of calm had replaced my previously tense demeanor. Enjoying a deep, cleansing breath, I was in a place I knew I would be spending a lot more time getting to know.”

Go to ‘Weekend Escapes to the Central Coast’ to see the rest.

Bridgework

: warning sign on our dirt road

: road crew replaces boards on our canyon bridge

: road crew replaces boards on our canyon bridge

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

Low-Rider Truck in Pismo Beach

: Low Rider truck in Pismo

: Fuel tank is in the bed, as this sits on the ground

: The power unit for the hydraulics

: This truck can lower itself until it touches the ground

: The engine, nice and clean and efficient

I came upon this Low-Rider truck in the Pismo Beach/Grover Beach area….
It is nicely detailed and efficiently engineered.
It can lower itself until the body unit rests on the ground.

Savor the Central Coast 2011

The California Central Coast is a unique place. We have many varied micro-climates and have a wide variety of locally-grown foods and wines that are seen as among the best in the world. We also have a yearly Food Expo put on by Sunset and some of the local foodies.

I went last year and had a really fine time…. I sampled foods from many different chefs…… Be sure to click the ‘Savor the Central Coast’ button to the left of the screen… that will take you to all of the blog postings I made on that trip.

Ladder-Backed Woodpecker

This is either a Ladder-Backed Woodpecker… or a Nuttall’s Woodpecker…. the two species are known to hybridize, and their area overlaps near this point.

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.