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I enjoy noticing different kinds of tree bark, particularly in hardy street trees which have to put up with daily abuse from passersby, dogs, and bad air. Below is a picture of a particularly badly treated tree. Apparently someone stapled an electrical cord to it then left it so long that the bark grew around it.
Images Copyright 2010-2012 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under News & Reviews
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The Silicon Valley is more famous for computers and high technology than for cactus. Nonetheless, the high dry summer heat makes where I live to the south of San Francisco wonderful for dessert gardening. My cactus are far too generous in sharing their spines (particularly the soft looking Bunny Ears – Opuntia microdasys – that sheds hundreds of tiny spines at the lightest touch) but their elegant shapes and lovely summer flowers make up for puncture wounds all year. The short-lived feathery flowers are as delicate as the surrounding spines are nasty. Today, my garden on the Guadalupe River features cactus blooms measuring 1/2 inch (on Bunny Ears) to 4 inches (on the giant Prickly Pear). This is a good year because my Electrode Cactus (Ferocactus histrix) is blooming for the first time since I planted it in 1998.
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Images Copyright 2012 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
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Our San Jose Guadalupe River cottonwood trees are filling the air again. Even though I have written about this before (2009, 2008), being caught in a dancing seed storm and having delicate fluff settling all over my garden still surprises and charms.
Images 2012 Copyright Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
Living on the Guadalupe River in San Jose, California, we have had a variety of unwanted creatures move in with us, including: squirrels, mice, and recently, roof rats. We discovered the roof rats because they eat the outside of our lemons and the inside of our oranges, then leave the cored or peeled remainders hanging on the tree or all over the walkway under it: nasty! Apparently, the smart rodents eat citrus fruit to counteract rat poison.
Our latest move-in is a hive of honeybees under our roof tiles. A neighbor who is a beekeeper looked them over and said that the hive is healthy, not aggressive, and doing no harm at the top of the house. He advised leaving the insects in place and said that we would not have problems with squirrels or roof rats in the future because the bees would drive them off. He also observed that our garden (especially the roses) was perfect for bees – and offered to put two hives on our riverbank and split the resulting honey with us. We are looking forward to becoming beekeepers ourselves!
Images by Katy Dickinson Copyright 2012
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
One of our ongoing projects is looking for historical photos of WP668, the railroad caboose in our backyard where I have my office. WP668 was built in 1916 but the earliest known photos are from 1973. We keep hoping that images from 1916-1972 will be discovered. I was delighted today to find another image of our caboose on p.244 of a recently-published book John bought for me: The Western Pacific by Ken Meeker, 2011 (Publisher: White River Productions; ISBN: 1-932804-11-0). The image was taken by Dave Stanley in 1973. The caption text from p.244:
Sacramento Northern’s Holland Branch was an obscure freight-only, 16-mile-long line constructed in 1929 to tap the vast agricultural riches of the Sacramento River Delta’s Holland Tract. Diverging from the SN main line at Riverview, the line provided access to numerous on-line packing sheds. Outbound shipments of asparagus, celery, pears, molasses, and sugar made the branch a moneymaker during its earlier years. After completing daily switching chores at the Clarksburg sugar refinery on September 14, 1973, Tidewater Southern 746 departed Clarksburg Junction and headed back to West Sacramento with two cards of molasses and a classic home-built WP composite bay window caboose bringing up the rear. The distinctive grade at this location was necessary to enable the tracks to reach the top of the levee that protected the narrow waterway of Winchester Lake.
Earlier in the book, there is a photo of one of WP668’s sisters, caboose WP676, with this caption:
Hard-pressed for cabooses during World War II, Western Pacific constructed 62 composite wood and steel bay window models using 15001-16000 series outside-braced Pullman-Standard box cars originally built in 1916. The composite cars were used system wide prior to the arrival of all-steel cabooses in 1955. As steel cars arrived, the composite crummies were bumped to local and branch-line assignments. February 3, 1969 finds caboose 676 (built in 1944) trailing the westbound Reno Local at Martin, Nevada.
This is the second book in which a photo of WP88 is published. The other is Western Pacific Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment by Jim Eager, 2001 (Publisher: Morning Sun Books; ISBN-10: 158248063X, ISBN-13: 978-1582480633). All of the published references to our caboose are listed on WP668.org.
Our caboose was a popular location for Easter Eggs during the great backyard hunt last week:
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Images Copyright 2012 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Caboose Project and Other Trains, Home & Family
We had more than a dozen children over with their families and friends for our annual backyard Easter Egg Hunt and potluck brunch in Willow Glen (San Jose, California). Among the kids, our son Paul was the oldest egg hunter at 19 and Howard was the youngest, at age 3. The devious Bunny and his helpers came up with the following poem hints about hiding places for the coveted Gold and Silver eggs:
GOLD:
My roost once used to roll and pitch
My halo exists at other men’s whims
In finding me please don’t twitch
The creek where you’d fall, nobody swimsSILVER:
I creep at the edge of an –ito
Don’t over-step or you will cheat-o
Chameleon-like I hide
Hurry quick! I won’t abide.
The Gold egg was found quickly (on top of the electrical box behind the light on the porch of WP 668, our caboose), but the Silver egg eluded all hunters until late afternoon. It was wrapped in tape and painted to look like a stone in the arroyito. The rules of the hunt are the same year after year:
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Images Copyright 2012 by Katy Dickinson and John Plocher
I brought home a load of thirty boulders on Sunday.
My late father loved his garden. On family vacations, he and I would compete for who could find the best stones to wedge into the car to take home to our rock gardens. Since the family house in San Francisco sold and the new owners will be redesigning the landscaping, I am moving the boulders out of my father’s garden into mine. Each rock has to be fitted into its new place – like flower arranging but much heavier.
Long ago, our family used to rent a vacation cabin at Fallen Leaf Lake in the mountains near Tahoe. We were last there in 1996 for my father’s 70th birthday party. The cabin was in an area where the rocks are grey and white striped. Both my father and I brought some of these wonderful stones home. On Sunday afternoon, I gardened with my father – arranging his boulders with mine around my silly concrete hippo.
Image by Katy Dickinson Copyright 2012
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
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