Fall in Big Valley

Signs of the local economy appear from pillar to post in Big Valley.



A walnut processing shed in the Northern California architectural vernacular - corrugated sheet metal. The whirring of the walnut driers can be heard throughout the valley.



Fenton hugged an oak ten times his own age, a tree which was young when Fenton's great great great great great great great great great great grandfather was alive. The tree may predate the voyage of Columbus. Think of that and the events that may have transpired in its shade, the generations of Pomo acorn gatherers, the slough-full of hitch, and the foraging grizzlies.



Fenton brought a bottle of Makers Mark bourbon along, a product of his home state of Kentucky. We toasted to new friends and to the impending backpacking trek at the Lost Coast on which Al, Will and I were about to set out. The Lost Coast, not really all that far North by Northwest of Lake County, proved to have a sort of spooky, ragged quality haunted by Roosevelt elk rather than our local Tule elk and by the shadows of Sasquatch who seems to have supplanted Ishi in the California imagination.

Standing on one of the small pocket beaches locally called dog hole ports by the loggers, one is warned not to turn one's back on the ocean. Its rogue waves are not to be underestimated. Each beach, at the mouth of its own canyon, is separated from the next by a jagged, forested ridge mounted by dauntingly steep trails, which in some cases followed old skid roads and lacked switch backs. Big-leafed maples mixed in with redwoods, tanoaks, bays, and douglas firs on the canyon flanks. Spoor of elk, bear, cougar, fisher, fox and coyote littered the trail. Stellars jays were heard often but remained hidden.





Where the Mayacamas Range meets Big Valley you might notice, in case it slipped your mind, that you are in the Golden State.



Honey bees negotiated breeze-blown sunflowers.



The four-year-old fuji apple tree bears its first crop.



Virginia creeper came West and climbed the tool shed.



Sweet gum from the other end of the continent.

Seeds In The Dust

Raccoon tracks are etched clearly in the powdery dust.

Fox tails, those grass seeds equipped with daggers and drills, bore implacably into socks and running shoes. Goat heads, those seeds encased in multi-pronged hard casings puncture bike tires. Curse-worthy as they may be, these seeds are, in their design, only trying to propel themselves to new territory where they might establish new kingdoms.

The back field, newly harrowed and dragged, is dry and dusty, but already laden with millions of seeds, which arrived airborne or broadcast by birds and mammals, or ejected a matter of inches from their mother plants. An immense variety of native and foreign grasses, thistles, clover, poppies, morning glory, vetch, alfalfa, miner's lettuce and others is now latent in the dust.
The desiccated earth is riven by cracks, inches wide and deep.



Fig leaves transmitted afternoon light.







Citizens competed to grow squashes, melons and flowers most nearly approaching perfection. The winning produce graced the Lake County Fair.







Sleek champion livestock basked under florescent lights in the big barn at the fair.

Gathering In

Plums and peaches ripened abundantly in early August, their weight breaking the branches of the young trees.



Chicken wire cylinders cast shadows.



Chaparral on the mountain showed russet in the afternoon light.



It is unusual to see clouds at this time of year.

Kingdom of Plants

Bud has his old place on the market. It is the southernmost parcel on Lakeport's waterfront. The five acres abut an eighty acre piece outside city limits on which cattle graze. The structures on the place are being overtaken by the riotous growth of grasses.
Otter, mink, deer, turtles, egrets, ospreys and eagles frequent this lush habitat and its tule marshes. Access is via an easement off commercially zoned South Main Street. But once you are into the property, the sounds of commerce fade away. It is as if you are on the lake shore of old. This would be an ideal keystone property for the Lake County Land Trust to protect.





Prairie merges softly with marsh and lake here, obscured by grasses.





A sequoia, cedars, apples, and walnuts grow near the homestead. Willows, valley oaks and cottonwoods grow near the marsh.



July 2nd was a hot day. An ancient valley oak at Finca Castelero smoldered. The great tree had for many decades been hollow. A colony of honey bees had taken up residence. Organic matter, composting within the trunk, heated to the ignition point, a case of spontaneous combustion, which brought the whole tree to its knees. The well-charred inner surfaces were exposed when the trunk and massive limbs smashed to the ground. Larry sawed an escape route for the bee colony.





Pears in Big Valley are swelling. Harvest time is approaching.

The Creek Runs Dry

Many thousands of hitch fry were stranded in fast-shrinking pools as the creek dried up this week. The mud surrounding some of the pools was densely laced with duck tracks, likely a sign of mergansers seeking the tiny fish.



In a matter of hours the swimming multitudes were lodged in the mud, dead. If the creek is ever restored to its year-round flow, hitch numbers should increase exponentially. Bullfrog tadpoles, too, died in significant numbers. These amphibians, introduced here from East of the Rockies, are not well adapted to creeks which dry up suddenly in mid summer. They require a longer transition period from egg through tadpole to frog. Still, far too many of them do survive in more permanent waters to out-compete native frog species.



The gravel bed of the creek is preferred habitat for dozens of crying killdeers desperate to get away from man. Green herons haunted the last puddles in the shade of alien tamarisk.





There was time enough this year for most of the Western toad and Pacific tree frog tadpoles to mature. Pudgy toadlets dispersed in all directions, many successful at finding congenial habitats, where irrigation regularly moistened earthen edges of planted areas.



Now that this stretch of creek is dry, a road crew bulldozed and graded a ford across the creek renewing Renfro Crossing.
Nearby, ospreys watched disconsolately from their new nest atop the Granite Construction gravel elevator.





In 1922 the Bensons planted a fig tree. Eighty-eight years later this mother fig is comprised of many trunks and an immense canopy, which meets the ground. To be beneath it on a hot day is to be relieved of blinding glare and bathed in green light and pungent smells of fruit and earth.









Yet another cat devoured yet another bird in the shelter of the fig tree.



A noisy frenzy of mobbing starlings alerted me to the ripeness of the season's first figs.



In the field, shaggy now, American goldfinches clambered about on seed heads.



A monarch butterfly sipped the nectar of a buddlea.

Living Things Head For The Shade

There were a couple of hot days in late June including a day when the thermometer at the ranch reached 100 degrees.
Some cattle retired to the dense shade of a fig tree in the midst of a walnut grove.



The St. John's wort does not bloom for long. It is at its best for St. John's Day, which roughly coincides with the Summer Solstice. Ten years ago on June 24 I arrived unwittingly on the very night of St. John's Day on the island of Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil. Large bonfires blazed in the middle of the narrow roads. Silhouetted and shiny-skinned figures danced, tossed firecrackers and drank beer from liter bottles. Singers and musicians filled the night with Samba. I joined the islanders in celebrating the Festa of Sao Joa, corresponding to their Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.





Hollyhocks reseed themselves returning in slightly different configurations from year to year. They seem to be appropriate companions to the 88-year-old ranch house.



Nineteen friends from the city came up to Two Bucks Ranch for the Fourth of July Weekend. They mostly laid around, talked, read and napped in the shade. Al's brain needed frequent rest from his readings in philosophy. Later he emailed me a link to an article about the fad in Japan for "forest bathing", which is not unlike our weekends in the country in its healthful effect.
It seems that being in close proximity to trees has many measurable health benefits.



During the night the ranch house collects cool air. In the morning we close the windows, doors and curtains to capture the relative coolness as the outside temperature climbs.