family reunion

July 5, 08
Shingle Springs
James' & Janet's house
family reunion - Saturday afternoon
warm, breezy - the wind has cleaned the smoke out of the valley but driven it up here into the foothills. At the peak, about 1500 fires were burning in California over the past two weeks - most in northern California but now the biggest are along the coast at Big Sur -

Kids & adults play at building marshmallow guns - boys interested in my big camera are called back by mom - not wanting me to be disturbed - I'll show the big old beast to the curious child later -

After a little while most of the activity moves indoors and the windchime song is accompanied by finches calling back and forth, a jay in the distance and other unseen songbirds.

Wind blows through the trees whistling then quiets - the ground is very dry - it's been a dry year - straw dry grass covers the area with dry leaves & other dead dry weed plants. A couple oak seedlings hang on between larger specimens. I think these are mostly scrub oak here - I don't know how many native oaks there are in California and I don't know them all - yet -