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San Luis Obispo is the major town near us to the north. It’s a fairly small town with two collages and the sense of a rural community. The truck/human ratio is fairly high. Locals refer to the city and the county both as SLO (pronounced ‘slow’). We also call the city ‘San Luis’ (Lewis….. not louwee’), and another name is ‘Slo-Town’.
San Luis Obispo has long struggled to retain its rural character…. the county is a major anti-growth county, and the city of San Luis Obispo severely restricts building in its limits.
There are many unique aspects to Slo-Town.. for instance in 1990, SLO became the first municipality in the world to ban smoking in all public buildings, including bars and restaurants. There is a really unique HUGE hotel called ‘Madonna Inn’ that is something of a world-renowned hotel. And San Luis houses one of the premier universities in the world… (Cal-Poly) California Polytechnic State University. The first motel in the world was established in San Luis in 1925 (it cost $1.25 for a night).
Like many towns, San Luis has architectural styles that cover a broad spectrum of styles from Frank Lloyd Wright to backyard builders…. therefor we have the simple storefront buildings, Victorian homes, and old wooden barns being used as warehouses you see in these photos.
If you travel to California, make sure you go through the Central coast… and SLO is a good town to use as a central base for visiting the area.
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San Luis Obispo California storefront
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San Luis Obispo California depot
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San Luis Obispo California Victorian Home
 Avila gulls
Gulls in Avila
The Many Faces of Pismo Beach
The modern Pismo Beach has been built up over several generations, with successive groups of folks moving in from other places. As the town has grown, and the small amount of easily accessible and usable land already used for building… it was inevitable that building would progress higher up the hills. These newer homes tend to be more individual in character. These steep sites with engineered slopes and retainer walls lend themselves to custom planning for the habitation itself.
The stark geometric lines of the house below are natural extensions of the retainer walls of which the structure is well integrated with.
 clean crisp lines in Pismo Beach
 - Steep drops in Pismo Beach
Many of these homes are four levels high on the downhill side, yet the top floor is street level on the uphill side. Such requires massive pilings several meters deep into the underlying rock. The price of the lot is just the beginning of the costs…. but my.. what massive stunning and sweeping views of the coastline from those windows!
This coastline is something of a Riviera area…. the weather is mild… and the population seems to swell in the summer… in the winter it is a sleepy little town on the beach.
 Iberian style architecture in Pismo Beach
The first Europeans in the area were the Spanish. But they used the area only for ranching, the nearby port was a handy place to load the stacks of cowhides that were this areas major export.
Close on the heels of the Spanish were a good number of Portuguese families who became known for fishing these local waters. They left their mark with the architecture, some local dishes, and names in the phone book.
This home is reminiscent of some of the homes in Portugal.
 Steep hillsides in Pismo Beach Strong retaining walls are required in these hills. You can take a steep hillside and convert it to a series of terraces…. sometimes each with one level of a home…. There are some nice examples of steep hillside dwellings in Pismo Beach.
“For that which is boundless in you
abides in the mansion of the sky,
whose door is the morning mist,
and whose windows
are the songs and the silences of night”
~Kahlil Gibran~
Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness
ere you build a house within the city walls.
For even as you have home-comings in your twilight,
so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night;
and it is not dreamless.
Does not your house dream?
and dreaming, leave the city for grove or hill-top?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand,
and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets,
and the green paths your alleys,
that you might seek one another through vineyards,
and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
But these things are not yet to be.
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together.
And that fear shall endure a little longer.
A little longer shall your city walls
separate your hearths from your fields.
And tell me, people of Orphalese,
what have you in these houses?
And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace,
the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances,
the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty,
that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort,
that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest,
and then becomes a host and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer,
and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed
and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses,
and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul,
and then walks grinning in the funeral.
But you, children of space, you restless in rest,
you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound,
but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors,
nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling,
nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendour,
your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky,
whose door is the morning mist,
and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night
Stairway to Heaven?
 - Harbor Patrol, Avila Beach California
No, it’s the Harbor Patrol on the pier in Avila
Shell Beach California…
Low Tide….
The right time.. the right place
“My thoughts expand and flourish on this most barren hill…”
~Thoreau
In the summertime we get a regular weather phenomenon known as a ‘marine layer’ that appears in the later afternoon. This brings in a layer of moist wet foggy low-clouds that roll in from the sea. By late afternoon the fog has reached inland enough to blot out the sun. While this might seem a disadvantage… actually, when other places are broiling in the summertime, our coastal areas can have very nice and cool temperatures. And in wintertime, we often have much sunnier weather than we do in the summertime…. go figure!
At any rate…. the spread of this fog layer normally extends only to the first row of hills that are a prominent feature of the landscape along much of the California coast. The relatively flat areas between the hills and the sea are known as a ‘Coastal Plain’. The Coastal Plain is heavily influenced by the moderating of the sea. In the winter time, the relatively warm waters keep the coastal plain a bit warmer than the hill areas and inland deserts. In the summertime, the relatively cool waters will keep the coastal plain area from being too hot.
We live inland beyond the coastal range of hills. So while we have clear skies in general, we can often look at the hills along the coast and see the fog backed up on the coastal side.. trying to reach over the hills. When it does, it slides down the low spots (saddles) and drifts down like a stream… slowly the warmer drier inland environment will break up the mist and vaporize it… you can watch as it slowly dissipates and turns into a vapor and drifts off into the air…. vaporizing and disappearing as it drifts….
They say that each Hydrogen and each Nitrogen, and each Oxygen molecule has been around the world a number of times…. been breathed into and out of the lungs of great numbers of people and animals in the last billion or so years….. each of these molecules is something that is, was, and will be. Eternal as matter can be.
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The fog creeps in from the sea, behind the grassy knoll
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Big Sky
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Fog
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Panorama from the Rivenrock Cactus Plantation
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Fog creeps over the Coastal Hills in California
The importance of this fog layer cannot be discounted. The fog keeps the local dry environment cool enough so plants transpire less, it reduces soil moisture loss, and as a great bonus, the fog often leaves the plants wet with dew by morning. This dew and fog being caught by the plants and dropping to the ground gives the local environment a bit of moisture in the heart of an otherwise dry summer.
‘The Scorpion’
~Hilaire Belloc~
The Scorpion is as black as soot,
He dearly loves to bite;
He is a most unpleasant brute
To find in bed at night.
I found this fellow running across my desk in the house today.
Luckily I had my mug to trap him, so I could take him outside.
 Scorpion Paruroctonus silvestrii
…. These are the common little scorpions here in California.
They are not terribly poisonous… I’ve been stung by one once….
It feels like a nail has been driven into your skin. It really hurts….
The local site of my strike suffered a necrosis…
in ten days I had a small half pea-sized chunk of skin and meat slough off, leaving a half-healed crater in my finger. But it grew back in OK.
I got stung while digging a hole and not wearing gloves..
always wear your protective gear… if I’d had strong gloves on, I’d not have been stung….
just like when the tarantula or the Black Widow bit me… gloves would have been nice then too! LOL
 - Scorpion
Click to embiggen,
you can see the hairs on this dude.
 A Scorpion, Paruroctonus silvestrii
I let him go in the front yard… which is just a weed-whacked wilderness really.
We have deer and quail wandering daily in the front yard….
We see tarantulas and scorpions and rattlesnakes here often enough….
there’s no need to run this guy a mile away to ‘release’ him….
but when I got close to take his picture… he got shy and curled up, all scared
when I backed the camera off he’d jump up and start to run away.
 A Scorpion Yeah, he’s a pretty nice looking little animal.
He reminds me of a lobster
Our lobsters here in California don’t have big claws….
These guys hold their prey with their claws.. and their stinging tail comes up and over their head… they will push the spike into their prey… it pushes in and holds there… you can see they will often make several little pushes to fully embed the stinger.
When I got stung, it happened very quickly….
I think in my case it just wanted to give me a ‘short, sharp shock’ so I’d know I was crushing it while digging bare-handed in the soil. In the case of a bug that it captures, it has the ability to hold and restrain the prey animal while it very deliberately injects its poison to maximum effect.
 Rivenrock Panorama
I took a panorama photo of the cactus plantation.
The perspective and aspect are skewed….
But it makes for an interesting photo.
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Agave Victoria Reginea
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Aloe vera
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Big Aloe
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Aloe officionalis
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Aloe
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Cereus peruvianus
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Opuntia ‘Nopaleana cochinialiffera’… AKA Nopalea grande
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Opuntia ficus-indica var. Anaheim
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Opuntia ficus-indica var. Anaheim
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Opuntia ficus-indica var. Ojai
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Opuntia ficus-indica var. Ojai
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Opuntia ficus-indica var.Vandy alba
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Opuntia ficus-indica var.Vandy alba
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Opuntia ficus indica var. Burbanks Spineless
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Opuntia galapagaea
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Opuntia ficus-indica, Lynheimeri X Engelmanii
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Opuntia ficus-indica, var Lynnwood fruits
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Opuntia ficus-indica var Santa Ynez
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Opuntia ficus-indica, var Lynnwood
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Opuntia microdaysys yellow
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Opuntia robusta
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Opuntia Subulata
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Trichocereus pachanoi
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Trichocereus spachianus, four feet tall
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Yucca elephantipes
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Agave
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Agave Americana glauca
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Agave Americana variegata
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Agave Americana variegata
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Succulent
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Succulent
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Succulent
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Succulent
I took a walk about the place this morning, taking photos of some of the cactus growing here.
We don’t actively sell all of the plants in our collection… but we’re always willing to negotiate the purchase of a plant or more if someone wants to explore the possibilities.
Not all states allow cactus into them without a special inspection for which the state of California charges dearly.
Some states allow cactus that has no roots… so for those states we can take cuttings of some of the plants… this may make it easier, or more possible, and cheaper to ship.
Some of our plants, such as the agave and aloe have to be sent with roots, so we wash them, and prepare them for shipment carefully.
You can see our cactus plant catalog at http://www.rivenrock.com/catalog2.html
The National Plant Board Rules and Regulations is also a good place to check on importation info for your state.
You can see that this section of our garden is very wild and rangy. we water a few times a year only, and we don’t worry too much about annual grasses and forbs. I think that a mono-culture is in essence a bad thing… it leads to soil-chemical/nutrient imbalances, easy pest-proliferation and a less diverse plant community that helps shield against these things. So we allow the weeds to grow… we mow and weedwack, the chickens eat much also, and scratch the ground killing many of the weeds. By winter-time the weeds have been trimmed or knocked down to where they are by then only a mulch on the ground. As the winter rains fall and stimulate the new weed seeds to growth, the mulch will help to shield them from the elements… it will then rot into the soil in the next year or so. This continual recycling of nutrients is a good thing for your soil.
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