Posts in: Apple

Woodpecker granaries are really neat. This one was right on a trail at Pinnacles NP. We did see an acorn woodpecker nearby though the photo isn’t great.

A dead pine tree pecked full of holes meant for woodpeckers to store acorns.A close up of actual acorns in the holes of the granary.

I neglected to post that our cultivated native California roses (Rosa californica) are blooming. Their flowers are fragile and nearly just by looking at them they go to tatters

Ortho4XP on macOS Ventura

Ortho4XP has some code that’s been deprecated in the latest Python 3 Shapely and Numpy. You’ll need to downgrade Shapely to version 1.8.5. On my Mac after following the Big Sur installation instructions (I’m running Ventura): pip3 install shapely==1.8.5 After that you’ll need to go through the source files and replace numpy.bool to just bool and then numpy.float to just float (I used bbedit). This is probably safer than downgrading numpy.

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Last weekend: in its most happiest habitat, predominantly here are Yellow Monkeyflowers within massive rocks at Pinnacles National Park, California. #MonkeyFlowers #PinnaclesNationalPark

Sandwiched inbewteen massive lichen covered rocks are vertical stems of monkeyflowers showing bunches of yellow flowers. The rocks are kind of forming a small channel.

I’ve learned a bit about repairing hose bibs and turns out it’s pretty easy. I’m kind of looking forward to repacking my front yard hose bib this Friday so it stops leaking at the stem and I can put a new Rachio smart hose timer on it.

American Gold Finch digging for sunflower seeds the other day. #AmericanGoldFinch #Birds #Fujifilm

The American Gold Finch, peering into a bird feeder hole, has a black cap and, besides it’s wings, an all light yellow body. Only the front edge of its right wing is visible and it is mostly black with some white patches. The bird is partially obscured by a vertical transparent bird feeder with a blurry (bokeh) green vegetation background.

And now a female Bullock’s Oriole has shown up in our backyard. What luck. #BullocksOriole #Birds

A female Bullock’s Oriole is perched at the edge of a bird bath that’s in front of an elderberry bush. The bird has a fully gray back with white bars on its exposed right wing. Its upper chest is yellow-orange. Her head is orange from the eyes down to the chest though there’s a strip of black below it’s chin. The bird has black around its eyes and has a gray cap.

Here’s yesterday’s Bullock’s Oriole looking right at the camera. #BullocksOriole #Birds A Bullock’s Oriole sits in a violet flowering Ceanothus bush, looking straight ahead. It has an orange chest and orange cheeks. Its head is mostly orange, but it has black on top. The cute bird has black eyeliner and a black chin, creating a cool triangular pattern that nearly looks angry. You can just barely see its right wing. Its wing is black with white on the bottom.

Ladybug larvas were later than normal this year but geez do they have a feast now!

Several ladybug larvae, kind of a rectangular bug with mostly black with orange stripes, are gorging on aphids on a sage.

We planted our vegetable and herb seedlings today. Our home compost has turned out real nice. Took several years to build up enough for use. The worms do most of the work since we can’t get the compost hot enough for long. 🌱 Two planted crop rows with drip tape. In the background are stunningly violet flowers of Ceanothus bushes. To the right of the crop rows is patio with grapes leafing out below the awning. Gravel makes up paths between crop rows.A wheel burrow full of worm laden compost. It’s sunrise and the shadows are long.

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