End of Dry Season

The hinge of the year has swung, opening the door on the season of rains. The garden has been done in by the first frosts. We are two miles from the lake so its moderating temperature at this time of year is of no help here. In visiting the gardens at Ceago Lago, I saw tomatoes and squash still thriving.



The creek bed here is still dry, but the slowly advancing waters have pooled less than a mile uipstream. The next heavy rain will recharge this part of the channel. Meanwhile it's a good place for a stroll.



Big Valley is home to various ungulates, mostly horses and cows. The deer and tule elk tend to keep to the hills. I'd love to see the Lake County Land Trust grow influential enough to aquire large lakefront parcels near the county park for the reintroduction of tule elk. The marshy land there with its extensive groves of valley oaks is now used for cattle, but is so unchanged from its original self that the elk would thrive.



The Land Trust already has protected a couple of hundred acres along the Rodman Slough, which with the addition of more
land, could be a great place for elk. Meanwhile, it's a pleasure to encounter the horses, cows and lesser beasts, each individual a personality unto itself.



The gopher snakes have retired for the season. Speaking of personality, they have a tolerant nature. They don't flee at my approach the way garter snakes would. Instead they'll accompany me while I move boards from a pile, all the while nosing around for meadow voles.



Kelseyville, in November, is slowing down after the pear and grape harvests. But there is still plenty of activity at the walnut sheds.



Kelseyville has a little gem of a Main Street. I wonder how the relocation of Kelseyville Lumber will affect its business and foot traffic. Agricultural land has been converted to residential and commercial uses at a shocking rate lately. The vistas of and from Big Valley are getting increasingly cluttered.

After The Harvest

The weather this past weekend in Lake County, California was cool, bright and dynamic. In the forenoon on Saturday a full, fat and low arched rainbow met us as we crossed into the county on the Hopland Grade. A promised land seemed spread out below, the gold and green valley meeting the blue lake.



From Two Buck Ranch that afternoon, the chapparal seemed gilded on the slopes of cloud-topped Mount Konocti.

The scene on the ranch looked, smelled and sounded pretty much like paradise. Anna's hummingbirds and lesser goldfinches visited the feeders. A covey of more than thirty quail scuttled in and out of cover. Crows clacked their beaks. Squirrels chased each other around and around the trunks of the ancient valley oaks.



The shrieking whine of dirt bikes soon pierced the air. I walked down to the creek bottom in an attempt to intercept the two boys on their machines. They zoomed down the dry, gravel-covered channel out of my reach. A deputy sheriff arrived, in pursuit of the trespassing bikers. She and I discussed the county ordinance which specifies that off-roaders show written permission from the landowner.



Because of the drought, the walnut harvest was meager this year. The giant fig tree, however, was bountiful. The tomatoes, squash, pears and acorns were abundant. If our edemic fresh water fish, known as hitch, was as plentiful as in former times, you could almost imagine living off the land at the ranch. Hitch have been increasingly scarce since large mouth bass and channel catfish were introduced to Clear Lake.



I've logged sixty seven bird species at the ranch so far. The characteristic species year round are California quail, acorn woodpeckers, California thrashers, California towhees, spotted towhees, house finches, lesser and American goldfinches, Anna's hummingbirds, barn owls, turkey vultures, Western bluebirds and Western scrub jays. They are joined in Spring by nesting tree swallows, Northern orioles, black headed grossbeaks and ospreys. Huge flocks of crows wheel about the oak canopy in August. Fall is the time for yellow rumped warblers and hermit thrushes. Winter is for white crowned and golden crowned sparrows down from British Columbia and the mountains. Red winged and Brewer's blackbirds also congregate in winter while sharp shinned hawks stalk the flocks.



The vultures prefer to roost on the dead limbs of the northernmost oak in the grove, a tree formerly stressed by surrounding concrete, which I have since torn out.