Leaf Management

Kelsey Creek pulsed with new waters, which cut through the ford at Renfrew Crossing in late October. There were only two months, August and September, this year in which our section of creek was dry. Blackbirds gathered in the hundreds to drink and bathe at the breach.



The new flow contained hitch fry which had been sequestered in permanent water upstream. Mergansers discovered the minute
fish at once. Merganser feathers matted a rock above a pool.





For reasons I have yet to comprehend creek beds in California are invariably used as roads.



Barn owl feathers scattered near the creek.



Puff balls and seedlings emerged from newly moistened earth.



At the ranch it is raking and sweeping season as we are inundated by oak leaves.



Sunflower seeds were harvested by oak titmice.



Ed's canning season is at an end. He has put up tomatoes, cucumber pickles, string beans, peaches, pears, and fig, blackberry, strawberry, and loquat jams.

Irruption of Migrants

On October 21 a low pressure area moved in from the Pacific. The moon was 48 hours short of fullness. For a half hour on either side of 3:30 PM these migrating birds bathed at the font:

20 yellow-rumped warblers
8 cedar waxwings
4 western bluebirds
1 bush tit
1 Wilson's warbler
1 hermit thrush
3 golden crowned sparrows
1 white crowned sparrow

This abundance in its comings and goings resembled on a miniaturized scale the activities at a water hole at Etosha Pan, Namibia. Each species appeared to defer to the other as they arrived and departed in shifts. Each animal seemed aware of the ripeness of the unfolding moment. Time itself seemed newly palpable as embodied in this awareness.

In Etosha, a last refuge for megafauna, the animal population visiting water within a half hour might typically be comprised of gemsbok, endemic black-faced impala, greater kudu, zebra, eland, giraffe, springbok, warthog, lion, elephant, banded mongoose, jackal, sand grouse, and ringed doves.

At night serval, caracal, hyena, and black rhino might share the same water hole.

On October 22 a skein of perhaps 200 Canada honkers winged their way south about 2,000 feet above the ranch.



The hedgerow of native plants is well established in its sixth year. It includes toyon, coffee berry, ceanothus, manzanita, coyote brush, redbud, gooseberry, and flannel bush. On what was bare tilled earth there is now food and cover for quail, jackrabbits and others.



The ever growing slash pile is a redoubt for quail, fence lizards, gopher snakes, alligator lizards, sparrows, ground squirrels and hares.



This week I planted more natives - buckwheat, sages, and penstemon, among others.



Settler families with roots in the East may have harbored nostalgia for high-color autumns. Their descendants planted Eastern trees such as sweet gum in the West. Lake County as a whole is still a place dominated by native plants in sharp contrast to counties such as Sonoma and Marin with their large tracts of eucalyptus, along with palms, acacia, and many other aliens.



This year's relatively short growing season for vegetables and fruit is winding down.

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.