Blog

29 Apr

Getting out there

On a perfect spring day, we took a beautiful hike at Morgan Territory Regional Preserve. A new hike Craig and I are always promising ourselves to get out and explore more of the many wonderful hiking trails in our area. Don’t get me wrong: we love our “stupid little hike”…
23 Feb

Return to the secret garden

More than four years ago, Craig introduced me to a small patch of wilderness that decades before had been planted with narcissus and daffodils. I wrote about it then, and last week we finally made another trek out to check on the current state of this secret garden.  Don’t hate…
02 Feb

San Diego between the storms

January between rainstorms was a lovely time to visit the San Diego area. Though this trip didn’t turn out quite as we’d imagined, we had fun exploring some of the less-visited sites.  To fly or not to fly? Private pilots like to say that if you absolutely must get somewhere…
06 Oct

Two overnights at Crater Lake

We made two visits to Crater Lake this year, one at each end of its short season.  The season opens Last May, we wrapped up our annual Oregon birding trip with a stop at Crater Lake National Park. We were lucky: the season had just begun and I was able…
04 Aug

Echo Lake Summer 2023

In July we made our second annual trip to Echo Lake.  Going back This past winter brought so much snow to the Sierras that we worried whether our planned annual stay at Echo Lake would be possible. Would the snow have retreated sufficiently to allow Echo Chalet to open on…
07 Apr

After the storms

At the end of a very rainy winter, Craig and I took advantage of a few days of sunny weather for an outing to Treasure Island. And before the rains started up again, we also attempted a hike at Briones Reservoir. Results were mixed.  Come for the view, stay for…
27 Mar

Down in the dumps

Texas Roadtrip, Part 5: After leaving the amazing birding hotspots in McAllen, Texas, we headed east to the Gulf Coast. We stayed overnight in Brownsville, with the intention of making an early morning visit to the local dump. Terns and tacos Our birding adventure in Brownsville began with trying in…
24 Mar

Beautiful Big Bend

Texas Roadtrip, Part 4: I thought you might appreciate a break from all the bird-y posts and enjoy some scenery and wildflowers from Big Bend National Park.  Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive We began our exploration of Big Bend National Park with a drive down to the Río Grande via the…
27 Jan

Try to remember

For several years, I have been crafting digital collages as a way to curate my photographs and document events in my everyday life.  A Postcard from Today It began like this. In August of 2016, I talked some girlfriends into joining me in a creative challenge: every day for six…
01 Jan

Once more around the sun

It’s the end of a year and the start of a new one: wishing us all peace and prosperity in 2023!  Interjection expressing discomfort, surprise, or dismay 2023 began with a crushing blow. After nearly three years, I blew my New York Times crossword puzzle streak at 899 games! All…
23 Dec

Gratitude in the season of Covid

The Christmas holidays have not been quite what I hoped for this year. Despite multiple vaccinations and diligent mask-wearing, Craig and I both came down with Covid a couple weeks before Christmas. He got it first and is over it now, testing negative two days running, but my tests are…
26 Aug

First annual trip to Echo Lake

In July, we had a perfect stay at Echo Lake. We liked it so well, in fact, that we went back again the next month! A nostalgic detour Making our way home from our hiking trip in the Eastern Sierras, we decided to stop at Echo Lake — or, more…
10 Jun

Hiking in the Eastern Sierra

Last week, we took our last trip in the camper before selling it. We headed out to the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains and revisited two of our favorite spots: Rock Creek Lake and the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains.  Last trip in the camper…
07 Mar

Flower power!

In mid February, with the vernal equinox still weeks away, spring was already in full flower here in Northern California: almond blossoms in the Central Valley, plum trees in the wooded hills, and cymbidiums at the Pacific Orchid Exposition. So we went exploring…  Spring has been bustin’ out all over…
20 Dec

Alice in Oxford

This is the second of two posts recounting my encounters with Alice in Wonderland during a ten-day visit to the UK in October 2021. (A link to the first post may be found at the bottom of this page.) Locks and keys In October 2021, after several days (and two…
06 Dec

Kindred

This is the fourth in a series of posts featuring photographs taken during our trip to Botswana and Uganda in August 2021.  Chimpanzee habituation Kibale National Park in western Uganda is home to a large population of chimpanzees, and they offer guided chimpanzee experiences to tourists. When I made our booking,…
29 Nov

The birds and the bees

This is the third in a series of posts featuring photographs taken during our trip to Botswana and Uganda in August 2021.  The bee-eaters Bee-eaters simply beg to be photographed! Not only are they exceptionally colorful and beautiful, but one of this bird’s strategies for attracting the bees and other insects…
22 Nov

October travels: Boston

The Gentle Author was holding their last-ever Advanced Blogging workshop in April 2020. I had signed up, booked my flights and lodging, and was looking forward to the trip, and then… well, you know what happened. But a year and a half later, the workshop was finally back on, and…
15 Nov

The fisher kings

This is the first in a planned series of posts featuring photographs taken during our trip to Botswana and Uganda in August 2021.  Pied kingfishers The first stop on our Africa trip was Maun, Botswana, where we spent a day and a half recovering from a more-grueling-than-necessary journey, before heading out…
08 Nov

Traveling in a pandemic

It was teatime in London, where I was attending an advanced blogging workshop. A pot of darjeeling and a slice of raspberry-almond cake were awaiting my attention, when my phone pinged with an unexpected and unwelcome message. It was from Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), alerting me that I’d been…
20 Sep

Making bricks by hand

I must first admit that I’ve never given much thought to bricks. We don’t use them for building in California (because, you know, earthquakes), and elsewhere in the country they’re just part of the built environment — in the background. But in Uganda, with a young and growing population and…
27 Aug

The best pineapples in the world

Craig’s last trip to Uganda was nearly twenty-five years ago, when he bicycled with a few other travelers through rural villages, staying at local hotels, eating in local restaurants, and visiting schools and similar institutions. He remembers the country from those days with great fondness: the kindness and hospitality of…
23 Aug

Gorilla tracking, day 2

The chance to see mountain gorillas in the wild draws many tourists to Uganda every year. For Craig and me, gorillas were only one of many attractions in this beautiful country (chimpanzees! tree-climbing lions! and don’t forget all the amazing birds!) — but they were definitely high on our list.…
09 Aug

An exotic visitor

This little red bird doesn’t look like much (especially in this dreadfully grainy shot), but he is in fact a vermillion flycatcher, who really had no business whatsoever being in north-central California at the end of November (or any other time, for that matter). And yet there he was —…
09 Aug

Meanwhile, in Botswana…

Where the Okavango River flows from Angola, through Namibia, and into northwestern Botswana, it spreads out to form a vast wetland covering as much as 5800 square miles, before finally sinking into the sands of the Kalahari Desert. Five main channels cut through the Okavango Delta, and innumerable smaller waterways…
06 Aug

Along the Pacific Flyway

Last November, with Covid cases spiking all over the country, Craig and I decided to celebrate our seventh anniversary by driving our camper out to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex to see the migrating birds. These refuges are part of the Pacific Flyway, one of four north-south bird migration…
30 Jul

Our local birds

Since we live on an island in the San Francisco Bay, we are blessed with all sorts of bird life, like these double-crested cormorants. Many species show up in our backyard, but beyond its bounds there are lots of others. I wanted to show you a few of them. Every…
26 Jul

Which bird is which?

For me, a big part of the joy of birding is the challenge of identifying unfamiliar birds. And because I’m fairly new to this pursuit, most birds are unfamiliar to me — which leaves me a lot to discover and enjoy! Here are a few examples from the past year.…
23 Jul

Our fine-feathered friends

During the pandemic, Craig and I, like so many others, watched birds. Not that this was completely new for us. If you’ve read this blog in the past, you will have noticed that birds figure prominently in many of my posts. But with the pandemic, our interest in birds rose…
08 Jan

Ring in the New Year!

Happy 2021! May this new year bless us with hope and health, truth and light and peace. I have often heard the expression “to ring in the New Year” without giving much thought to what it meant — aside from churches ringing their bells on New Year’s Eve. But this…
27 Nov

Silver linings

Hey there! Wherever you are, I hope this finds you safe and well (and wearing your masks!) during these challenging times. Do you also find that some version of the basic metta (lovingkindness) blessing — May you be happy. May you be well — opens most of your correspondence these…
31 Jan

The Bay and beyond

The San Francisco Bay Area is blessed with many splendid open spaces, including state, regional and national parks, as well as numerous local watersheds accessible by permit. But a significant loss for us this past year was the closing of the Buckeye Creek Trail in the Oakland hills, where Craig has…
21 Nov

Weekend in Walla Walla

Labor Day Weekend, 2018 Destination: Walla Walla, Washington NOTE: I originally drafted this post in September 2018, not long after the trip, but I hadn’t quite finished it when things went a bit crazy. Since it was pretty much ready to go, I decided to finish it up and post…
18 Sep

Hearty vegetable chowder

Having friends visit is always an occasion for cooking up something delicious, so when my friend Lisa came out from Philadelphia, we seized the opportunity to cook together — something we both enjoy. I made my favorite pan-roasted chicken thighs for one dinner, along with the simple boiled potatoes that…
11 Sep

What happens in Vegas

Las Vegas, Nevada. A destination for travelers from around the world: one of those must-see places for first-time visitors to the United States. A playground for the young and well-heeled (Jimmy Choo, Salvatore Ferragamo, Christian Louboutin…) A ruthless consumers’ paradise designed to part fools from their money as efficiently as…
29 Aug

Smiles of a summer night

I thought that publishing a “Smiles” list every week might get a little boring, so I decided just to make these occasional — which means that I’ve been saving up this batch for a while! A few weeks ago, I wrote about commuting on a Ford GoBike. Since then, I…
17 Aug

Great-Granddaddy Wise

One of my most prized possessions is a book of poetry written by my great-grandfather — my mother’s mother’s father. His first name was Stidger, but I don’t know whether anyone actually used it. Mom and her sisters called him “Granddaddy Wise” (Wise was his last name), and they adored…
07 Aug

All things bright and beautiful

In the same week, Krista Tippett and Maria Popova both discussed Michael McCarthy’s memoir cum manifesto, The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy. Or perhaps I just happened on these two conversations in the same week? I’m not sure — and it doesn’t matter, of course, except that the dual mention felt like a…
10 Jul

The east arm of the Wintu

Who wouldn’t want to read a book called A Field Guide to Getting Lost? I picked up Rebecca Solnit’s essay collection several years ago in the De Young museum shop, simply because I was intrigued by its title. My favorite part was her introduction, a rambling essay called “Open Door,” and…
03 Jul

Happily eating my vegetables

Yottam Ottolenghi’s cookbooks make me want to become a vegetarian. All his recipes look and sound amazing, but it’s the lovingly photographed vegetable dishes that practically leap off the page with their color and crunch and freshness. I’ve made several of the Mediterranean-inspired recipes from both Plenty and Jerusalem, and they…
26 Jun

Tea for me!

I hadn’t planned to treat myself that afternoon, but I know how it happened: a long midday walk through Belgravia and Hyde Park had left my feet aching and my stomach growling. Plus, I had three more hours to kill before the evensong service at St. Paul’s. So what should I…
22 Jun

Who is that big-footed bird?

Life gifts us every day with small mysteries, encounters that arouse our curiosity and intrigue our inquiring minds. Like the odd-looking bird I noticed the other day, when I was walking along the Serpentine in London’s Hyde Park. What could it be? It was about the size of a small…
19 Jun

Façades and derrières

“Where have you been all these weeks? Don’t tell me you’ve been getting into mischief again!” “No, no, I’ve been behaving very decorously,” he assured her. “You have to in Bath — a devilish place!” (Georgette Heyer, Black Sheep) Several times during my visit, I heard the assertion that in Jane Austen’s day…
17 Jun

Nom de plumber

Plumbing the depths What most intrigued me about my visit to Bath’s Roman Baths was what I learned there about lead. The Romans used lead mined from the nearby Mendip Hills to line their bathing pools, as well as the conduits through which water was channeled from the sacred spring…
15 Jun

Out and about in Bath

Another postcard from Bath First of all, I had no idea that Bath was on the River Avon— or any river, for that matter. Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer had sadly misled me on this point! Or, more likely, they thought it so obvious that there was no need to mention…
12 Jun

Postcards from Bath

She disliked Bath, and did not think it agreed with her — and Bath was to be her home.  (Jane Austen, Persuasion) Destinating Bath Any lover of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer must one day make a pilgrimage to Bath. Like so many others who have “destinated” Bath (an apt coinage I borrow from…
01 Jun

Curiosity and collectanea

Just what is this blog about? Curiouser and curiouser What comes to mind when I think about curiosity? First, I think of the Zen Buddhist idea of the beginner’s mind: setting aside our assumptions and preconceptions and encountering the world as a child does, with a sense of wonder and…