The Saga of Alfred

 About two weeks ago, I found Princess Fair-weather Daintypaws hunting something in my office.  I moved some stuff aside and found a bead on the floor.  I praised her for finding the bead and put it up on my workbench, but she continued in hunting mode, so I figured there was something else under there.  I moved more stuff aside and found what I thought was a large worm flopping around on the floor, so I scooped it up, carried it outside and dumped it in one of the garden beds.  It flipped itself over and I saw the scale pattern on it and realized it wasn't a worm, but the tail of a Southern Alligator Lizard.  

Since those lizards shed their tails as a defense mechanism, that meant the lizard itself was still in my office.... with Princess.  So I hustled back inside, tossed her out of the office, shut the door and started hunting for the lizard.  I found him, but he scurried away before I could catch him.  I moved more stuff, but he got away again.  Since then I've kept the door to my office shut in the hopes that the lizard would take the opportunity to escape into the furnace room so Princess wouldn't kill him.  

These lizards are valuable bug hunters.  At the Art Glass Guild studio in Spanish Village in September, I watched another Alligator Lizard hunting a swarm of termites.  As each flying termite fluttered to the floor, that lizard, whom I named Albert, would pop out of hiding, gobble up the termite, and dash back into hiding until the next termite landed.  So I was hoping Alfred would do the same thing under my house.  

Albert About to Nab a Termite

I hadn't seen anything of this lizard since then, but this afternoon I found Princess in hunting mode again, this time under the bookshelves in the family room, so I picked her up, put her in my office and shut the door.  I couldn't find the lizard, so I reopened the door, and found Princess sitting there with the lizard curled up on the floor in front of her.  I shoved her into the bathroom, shut the door and looked for a container to put the lizard's body in, but when I turned around, he was gone.  Hoping he hadn't run under the bathroom door, I opened it, and sure enough, she was hunting again in the corner of the bathroom.  

I got her out and finally managed to trap the lizard in the container.

Alfred in the Container

He didn't appear to be wounded, so I carried him waaaayyyy out behind the fence and released him into the shrubbery.

Alfred Among the Shrubs

Run free, Alfred, and DON'T COME BACK INTO THE HOUSE!

Snake Season

Neighbors on NextDoor are reporting finding snakes in their yards, including a rattlesnake and a San Diego Ring-necked Snake, Diadophis punctatis similis.   The Ring-necked snake is not poisonous, but rattlesnakes are definitely a danger to humans and pets.  When a neighbor found one in her front yard a few years ago, I wrote a post on how to tell a Rattlesnake from a harmless Gopher Snake.

 Recently I've been seeing a California Striped Racer, Coluber lateralis lateralis, also known as a Whipsnake, in my yard and the neighbors' veggie bed. These snakes move very fast and apparently can climb trees. I found this one sunning itself in my front yard the other day and again on my garden steps this morning. I thought at first it was part of the irrigation system, but then it quickly scooted into one of the succulents to avoid a dog passing by.

California Striped Racer

And then I also found a Western Skink, Plestiodon skiltonianus,  in the back yard this morning. This lizard with a very long tail lives up to its racing stripes and moves very fast but hung around just long enough for me to get a photo of it.  

Skink

The large gopher snake may still be around in the canyon somewhere, too, to the peril of the California Ground Squirrels that hang out under the bird feeder.   It pays to watch where you're walking these days.  

Some Kind Of Bug

 As the neighbors have tended their plants in the veggie garden, they've found various forms of insect life crawling on the plants or in the soil.  

The kids are fascinated by earwigs that they call pinch bugs.  Earwigs are scary looking but harmless to humans; they may actually be beneficial to gardens by eating decaying vegetation.  

Earwig

Other forms of insect life are various caterpillars or grubs.  They found this grub in the soil last week; bugguide.net has let me down and not identified it, but I think it might be the larva of some type of beetle, possibly Figeater Beetle larva.  These grubs also eat decaying vegetation, and apparently crawl on their backs, which explains the lack of visible legs.  I've always liked seeing the adult Figeater Beetles; I love their iridescent green color, although they're not the most graceful of fliers as they bumble around the garden seemly at random.  Various critters, including the neighbors chickens, consider the grubs to be a succulent treat.  

Grub

They also found this, possibly a chrysalis.  Still no idea what it is, but it, too, got fed to the chickens.  

Chrysalis?

Today they found this green caterpillar.  I thought at first it was a Cabbage Looper, but it doesn't have the yellow strip on the side and doesn't loop as it crawls.  Instead, it looks like it might be the larva of the Cabbage White Butterfly.  That caterpillar has a fuzzier body than the Cabbage Looper, but they look pretty similar.  

Cabbage White Butterfly Larva.  Maybe.

The garden is literally crawling with life all the time.  

 

"The Love Of Gardening Is A Seed Once Sown That Never Dies"--Gertrude Jekyll

 About a year ago I let a neighbor grow some kale and eggplant in Cindy's raised beds.  See The Gardener Is Gone....  He got busy with other things and didn't have much time to attend to the veggies he had planted, but they continued to grow.  

That left several of the raised veggie beds vacant, so when the family next door found that their own vegetable bed was being raided by voracious raccoons, I invited them to plant their veggies in Cindy's beds.  The drip irrigation was all in place, the soil she had filled them with was waiting, and her security system of anti-varmint panels was ready for action.  

So they came over with their kids, Maggie and Jude, and planted veggies, sowing seeds of carrots, beets and corn, and waited for them to germinate.  Then they added some broccoli and cauliflower plants that were a little further along, and those have been thriving ever since.  

And now another neighborhood family has joined us and has planted their veggies, too, so on Saturday we all had a Ladybug Release Party, turning hundreds of Ladybugs free to feast on the aphids and other pests that were eating the plants. 

Neighbors Tending The Garden

Kids Are Learning Gardening

Release More Ladybugs

Ladybug Ready for Release

It's been fun for me to look out into the garden and see it being productive and full of life, both vegetable and human, again.  And I know Cindy would approve that her garden space is helping educate and encourage a new generation of gardeners.  

A Better Place

 On my recent road trip up north, I took a side trip to check out A Better Place Forest's location at Point Arena, located about 130 miles north of San Francisco.  Cindy and I had had numerous end-of-life discussions over the years, but those discussions had never gone farther than deciding that we both wanted to be cremated.  When Cindy died in December 2020, I had to face the question of what to do with the box of ashes, and I didn't have an answer for that question.  

I had put a small amount of the ashes in the soil under a small "Blue Skies" lilac bush in our backyard last year, and a couple of family members had helped me surreptitiously deposit several "smidgeons" of ash around the grounds at one of her favorite restaurants, but that still left a LOT of ash in the box.  One of her favorite places to visit was the Muir Woods National Monument; every time we went to the Bay Area, we'd have to be sure to stop in for a visit among the towering, peaceful Redwood trees at Muir Woods and soak in the sense of tranquility generated by these magnificent trees.  I thought that her spirit would feel at peace among those trees, but I also felt that the National Park authorities would most likely frown on my efforts to deposit several pounds of ashes in the park.* 

So I needed to find an alternative site, and the Better Place Forest organization presented itself as a good alternative, with five forests in California, two in the midwest, three in Eastern states, and one in Flagstaff, Arizona.  The location at Point Arena seemed especially appropriate; we had spent many vacation days along the Northern California coast, at the old Greenwood Pier Inn at Elk and staying at our friends Eric and Elaine Hillesland's inn Alegria in Mendocino.  Also, the Point Arena location was the only location at the time that had  Coast Redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens, which have always been special to me from the days when my family went camping among them at Jedediah Smith State Park.           

I picked out a tree on-line last summer, but felt that I needed to see it and see the location.  Just to be clear, the trees in this forest are not old growth Redwoods; the area was heavily logged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so these Redwoods are mostly about 100 to 150 years old, but they are still magnificent, stately trees. 

Redwood Forest

View Toward The Ocean

Tree and Snag

Tallest Trees On The Planet

Sunlight Through The Trees

Peaceful Path

 

And it is a peaceful, beautiful place.  I think it's the right place for Cindy, and later, for me, too.  

*  Note:  although ash scattering is permitted in some areas under the National Park Service's jurisdiction, Muir Woods is specifically excluded.