easter walk

Walking with the family on Easter afternoon...

first day of spring

March 20, 08 - First Day of Spring
morning 10 a.m.
Hwy 99 south of Yuba City
on an orchard hunt with Wendell
cool - low clouds, like a high fog, patches of blue break through now & again, creating a constantly changing light

Wendell sees a gate to nowhere - I spy El Mexicano and it's guardian oak across the highway.

Farther along the road, a guardian oak by a pear orchard - I accidentally tear the neg as I release it from it's paper case, but it doesn't hurt any vital components of the image so I call it providence and go along with it.

Pears or almonds? Neither Wendell nor I really know - both of us have some second-hand familial knowledge but the actual identifying is pretty much guess work - (final verdict: pears.)


Early afternoon - picked up lunch in Chico, headed south out of town -

At Dayton & Durham Roads

Walnut orchard - clouds have cleared now, mostly sunny & warming up.

(across the road from the walnuts, one dead tree on the corner.)

Tightly planted almonds create a myriad of geomentric alignments - mown weeds cover the dry cool ground - cars and trucks fly by along the road - the rancher comes by on his tractor to see what we're up to, wishes us well, takes a diagonal path away through the orchard - a bee buzzes near, then away, no more blossoms to attract her here -

Just north of Durham on Durham-Dayton Road - at a sharp turn in the road -

Rio Bonito Road at Hwy 99, Bayles Ranch - Town of Biggs, just north of Yuba City

(across Rio Bonito from the orchard)

river walk

Went for a walk with Peggy today, checking out our trek with students in a couple weeks.

Saw this sign on a fence along the river but we couldn't manage to read it from the top of the levee, and getting all the way down to it didn't look very easy (especially in the shoes I was wearing.)

So I had the bright idea of using the zoom on my camera to see what it said, and voila! "Temporary Beaver Barrier Fence" is now legible, even the small print -

Just up river, the view is a little nicer, and we even find a pretty good spot for students to spend some time to journal.

I'm not taking the time today to journal myself, but I'm looking forward to some time here -

On the way back, I notice some oak galls, so I take a shot to remind myself to look up all the details about the oak gall wasp...

sac building

While I was at the SAC Bldg last week, I shot some slide film, too - and got a couple pretty cool Polaroid transfers from it. This is a more artistic rendering of the SAC Building itself.

And this is a charming house just down the street -

new studio space

Some of the SacArtQ met with Barry Smith at the soon-to-be Sacramento Art Complex (SAC) Building on K Street yesterday - I'll have a studio space there come May 1st, and so may some of the rest of the Q, more to follow -

front porch tree

Yay! new leaves budding on the Japanese maple on the front porch! That means I didn't kill it!

norcal orchards

Mar 10, 08 - driving trek with Theresa
10:30 a.m.
Garden Hwy, near 99, just south of Yuba City
high thin clouds, weak sunlight, no wind

naked orchard - walnuts? pecans? (Walnuts.)
with wild mustard in full bloom

ground I stand on is pale, dry, hard, but a dark moist swath of deep mud surrounds the orchard, carefully forded like a small moat

The mustard smells pleasantly spicy-sweet, not too overpowering. Lots of little birds sing and chatter, an occasional crow flies over cawing loudly.

Bees buzz among the mustard
billions of tiny blooms clustered
on long stalks massing together
to create a yellow three-to-four foot tall
mass of brilliant yellow

old tree on the edge of the orchard, surrounded by old tires on the ground

Theresa takes a photo of the artist. (This is my 4x5 crown graphic, which I use to take my black & whites; you can see a piece of Type 55 Polaroid film in my hand, too. At the opposite of the camera spectrum, I use my little Nikon digital to take my color shots.)


Farther on Garden Highway...
about 1:45 p.m. - lunchtime on the side of the road - almond orchard (I'm pretty sure) just beginning to bloom (I was wrong - peaches.)

definitely one for the "crazy woman on the side of the road" series - actually IN the road for this shot -

In the orchard itself - ground dry, farm dog not far away not sounding happy with our presence - or at least not happy with something -

Wildflower "weeds" grow down the row of trees, yellow and fuscia and white, along with two-foot tall wide bladed grass.

playing with macro on the digital

Theresa breathing in the orchard.


Down 99, across to the other side of the Feather River, we pick up Garden Highway again, to take the scenic route home - Old barn at the edge of a walnut orchard catches my eye -

roadkill

Target parking lot