I just wrote a blog post that was supposed to be scheduled for a week or so from now. Then I accidentally hit Publish instead of Preview. So I rescheduled it, which means if you got the email, and then tapped to to to the website to view the photos, they didn’t exist.
Oops. I’m sorry.
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You may recall that there was some serious rain this winter in Three Rivers. I was fascinated by all the rushing water and posted a few times about it in March. March 11, March 12, and March 13. (Probably posted in January and February too, but who wants to chase down all those links?)
One result of that enormous amount of water is that Kaweah Lake filled up very quickly. Now, the Army Corps of Engineers is letting water out as fast as possible to make room for the large amount of anticipated snowmelt. This means we can now walk down at the lake bottom again, and wow, is it ever fascinating and ugly.
Looking upstream from the Slick Rock parking area; Alta Peak is visible with snow on it and Blossom Peak has three points on the far right.
Normally when the lake is this low, this gate is open and we drive farther down. Not this time.
There’s a culvert beneath our feet here. It had to be roaring through to create this canyon.
The water is still flowing through the culvert; that is Highway 198 above.
Somebody was here when the mud was still squishy.
Driftwood galore.
So many layers of different types of dirt: silt, fine sand, coarse sand, all so thick.
It started getting a little squishy.
Look how deep this stuff is!
Too bad backhoes and trucks can’t come get this for fill on all the washed out roads, for future sandbags, and just to allow the lake to hold more water. But this is owned by the government, which isn’t exactly known for practical thinking or helpful practices.
Weirdly fascinating, definitely ugly. Life in Three Rivers can be so varied and interesting; if one must live in Tulare County, I vote for Three Rivers (although Exeter is an awfully nice town if you like town living, I dearly loved living in Lemon Cove, and Springville is quite beautiful in springtime.)
Tomorrow we will wash our eyes out with some wildflowers.
A post about walking on the lake bottom in March of 2020 is here. . . scroll down for the lake pictures.
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This post about yardening is not about procrastination; it is about pure enjoyment of one of the most beautiful springs in recent memory. Is it just Three Rivers?
Our cats have always loved feather grass. They try to kick the stuffing out of it when they are kittens, and then lie on top of it or try to hide in it when they grow up.
Basil was the only item that the fantastic plant nursery did not have; I found it at our local hardware store the next day.
Here is the studio to make this post a little bit about my art business.
It is a mystery as to why hollyhock keep volunteering when the deer bite them down to nothing.
In the past several years, I have weeded all around the baby poppies and ended up with a nice showing. This year I decided to skip that task, maybe because it rained almost every weekend. The result is tall weeds and almost no poppy plants.
Chances are there will be very few blossoms.
Had to end with a studio photo (and a bit of the painting workshop) to remind myself to get back to work.
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Sometimes life piles up a stack of difficult tasks, unpleasant chores, awkward situations, design problems that don’t seem to have an answer, missing information, incorrect instructions, circumstances that require negotiating skills, tricky decisions, impossible priorities. (Does this make you want to stab yourself with your pencils or knitting needles? Slam some chocolate? Curl up under your dining table with your thumb in your mouth?)
Recently I had a few of those types of challenging paths to navigate. Nothing serious, just no clear path ahead in several areas, all business-related.
So, I spent an entire day digging in the yard after a trip to a plant nursery so extensive that it required a more substantial vehicle than Fernando. I had been saving some gift certificates, and those were spent, along with some green paper with pictures of dead men’s faces, and I even plasticized some of the plants to put in the studio garden. (That means I used a debit card because it was a business expense.)
My yard is immense. It has about 10 separate sections, none of which look very polished, but all of which are a pleasure to putter around in (until the mozzies show up.)
I didn’t listen to music or podcasts. I just pulled weeds, pruned plants, dug holes, and planted new things, all while thinking only about gardening, not about problems needing a solution. Some of the “experts” on thinking say that relaxing your mind, ending the obsession, “changing channels” gives your brain a chance to come up with answers.
After living here for 24 years, I am finally learning which plants work and where they might be happiest. The difficulty of buying plants cannot be overstated. You can comb through the Sunset Western Garden Book and make a list. None will be at the nursery. You can make a list of plants that have succeeded in the past, and maybe you will find some, and maybe you won’t. You can try to remember the names of the ones that are currently looking good, fail to remember, take a photo using an app called “Picture This”, find a name that doesn’t match, show the photo to a nursery employee, and get steered toward something else. If the thought occurs to you, “I’ve never killed one of those before”, then maybe you will choose that. Of course, you could also think, “The deer in my yard might like that one”, and then you have another decision to make.
At the end of the day, I had no answers, one mosquito bite, 2 dirty hands, and many new plants to remember to water and guard from deer, gopher, bird, and bug attacks.
All in all, it was a very good day. Maybe in time I will figure out a few new paths through my tricky situations.
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Rocky Hill is private land, in the hands of several people. One of those people is a friend, and she arranged for us to go to the very top. I had asked her if we could have permission to climb it with The Farmer and Hiking Buddy, and she said she has access to the top and can take people, and yes, she would love to take us up. Then Tulare County had a flood.
After things settled down from the flood, we learned of a tour to see the pictographs on Rocky Hill. Our friend was part of the tour, and she suggested that we go to the top for lunch after the tour. You betcha!
Get this: there is a paved road to the very top of this big rocky hill, and by “big” I mean 5 miles in circumference and 3 miles in diameter (not sure where that got measured). Friend has a key, of course, and we loaded up chairs, a table, lunch, and ourselves, and headed up. And up. And up some more. 2.4 miles, specifically.
Friend had laughed to herself when I asked if we could climb it. She later told me she wasn’t having any part of climbing but was happy to drive up with us.
It was so very very perfect. Very very very perfect. A perfect way to spend the afternoon. Perfection.
Shut up, Central California Artist and show some photographs!
At the base—the hill sloping into the frame on the right is Rocky Hill.
That blue line is the Friant-Kern Canal. The wildflowers are mustard.
This is looking west.
And this is the unparalleled view of the Sierra. (Lots of people say “the sierras”, but it is the Sierra Nevada Mountains; thus “the Sierra” is the correct shortened term. You’re welcome. P.S. My dad taught me that.)
The tiny blue piece of water is actually called “Hamilton Lake”, and only appears in wet years.
The creek in the distance is Yokohl Creek, which did some real damage during the flood. People used to be able to remove sand from beneath the bridge, but some other people made them stop (for very petty reasons). Since then, the sand has piled deeper beneath the bridge and as a result, the creek flows very close to the underside of the bridge, which means debris builds up quickly during high water and then the water finds its way around the bridge, washing out the approach. Water always finds its way. (Ever heard of “unintended consequences”?)
The cattle were curious, as cattle can be. (Remember this? – scroll down to see)
Friend provided an excellent picnic lunch, so very generous, oh so good.
Through this tree is a black cow fixin’ to deliver a calf soon.
This was the only larkspur we saw.
What a perfect day! Thank you, Friend, for sharing your beautiful piece of Exeter and your heritage with us (and lunch!)
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Rocky Hill is on the edge of Exeter, California, in Tulare County, a well-known, well-loved landmark. It is the only convenient non-flat place to walk, run, or bikeride in the area, and there is a perpetual stream of foot and bicycle traffic up the road. The entire hill is private property, so all the activity takes place on the county road that goes over the saddle between Badger Hill and Rocky Hill.
Rocky Hill has many many Indian pictographs (and lest you get your knickers in a twist about “Indians”, the Native Americans I know prefer to be referred to as “Indians”). On the south side of the hill, 30 acres belong to a conservancy, and occasionally there are tours to view the pictographs. We had the privilege of participating in a tour on last Thursday.
Alas, it is forbidden to post photos of the pictographs on the interwebs. So, you get to see some scenery instead.
Rocky Hill is very rocky. It could be called Boulder Hill.
These are not pictographs; they are mortars, so I am showing you. (so there)
This is the fruit of a wild cucumber. The seeds provided the binders for the pigment used to paint on the rocks.
Lichen isn’t paintings so I photographed it.
Clover. I love wildflowers.(Did you know that?)
Boulders.
The view of Moses Mountain distracted me from the paintings.
The Farmer and Trail Guy were good listeners. Or maybe they were wondering when we could go eat lunch. We are not used to traveling in a pack or being told to stay together. Hiking Buddy was there too, along with other people we know and a few we did not.
I liked this view out from one of the caves we entered.
And then it was time for lunch, which was a private party that I’ll tell you about tomorrow.
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Does “following up” mean finishing? Concluding? Completing? Then why don’t we say that instead?
Sorry. Sometimes I get caught up in words.
This is how they look on the inside.
This is how it turned out.
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This stunningly beautiful spring in Three Rivers isn’t over yet. We’ve had no hot days, and although it might have been warm enough one day for the rattlesnakes to emerge, I haven’t seen any or heard any reports. So, instead of blathering on about using pencils, oil paint and murals to make art that you can understand of places and things you love for prices that won’t scare you, let’s go on another walk. (See how I did that?)
This is BLM (Bureau of Land Management) property about a mile above my house. Because the two footbridges washed out, there isn’t much traffic up there, which makes it the way I remember it before people started slapping it all over the interwebs and turning it into a popular place. (Mine, mine, all mine!)
Back along the road, the brodiaea were thick. These are also called “wild hyacinth” and “blue dicks”.
These are a miniature version of lupine. They look like Texas bluebonnets which are just a variety of lupine.
This one is in my yard: fiesta flower.
A resident of Tulare County might wonder why one remains here, with all the smog, “nothing to do”, high unemployment, high welfare, low education, fat people, high teen pregnancy, lack of a Trader Joe’s. However, if one is in Three Rivers in the spring after a wet winter, one might wonder why more people don’t live here.
Don’t move here, okay? You will hate it, especially in the summer. On the other hand, if you buy a house here, please do move here because there are more than enough vacation rentals in town.
Now, I might need to go pull some weeds.
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Today is not about art.
Tomorrow marks FIFTEEN YEARS of blogging, five days a week. Day after day, blah blah blah, this is what I do, what I did, what I’m planning to do, yadda yadda yadda, I went here, saw this, and did that, want to buy some art/a book/some cards? I learned something, I have questions, I have thoughts.
“Blog”. Weird word. This is an online journal, a log on the web, a web log, web-log, weblog, blog.
And I can’t seem to stop.
Today is not about art. It is just showing you some photos from my life, which seems normal to me, but is probably peculiar to you.
I took my car, Fernando, for an oil change. While Mark from Foreign Auto (559-734-8285, Honda, Toyota, Lexus, and Acura only) was taking care of Fernando, I walked to downtown Visalia. Mill Creek is flowing. This is what keeps those valley oaks alive. Quercus lobata is the name of these oaks, the largest in the country. (There is a black and white cat in the first picture.)
The next day, Trail Guy and I climbed up on the bank behind the house to cut a dead live oak. Doesn’t that sound weird? “Dead live oak”.
It felt wrong to smash the wildflowers.
My job was to help get the wood down to the neighbor’s driveway so we could load it into the back of the pick’em-up truck. Mostly I dragged, endoed, or rolled the heavy limbs so Trail Guy could use his superior strength to pitch them off the hill.
And then my work was done, so I went ogling things in bloom in the yard. Some years I miss this calla lily, but everything is slower this year so I caught this guy in its prime. It is called Dragon Arum. Finally learned, using a plant identification app called PictureThis. It is free but tries to trick you into subscribing by hiding the word “Cancel” in the upper righthand corner, almost invisible.
And that’s all I have for today, another glorious cool green flowery spring day in Three Rivers when I am supposed to be working but keep finding interesting things to do instead.
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Each month I wonder if I have learned anything. I seem to forget much of what I post in these monthly learned lists and wonder if anyone else does too. If you are curious, and if your screen shows Categories with searching capabilities, you can click on Learned List and see as many of the 71 past lists (I began doing this in 2017) as you care to waste, umm, no, spend time reading. Here is March’s tidbits for you to mull over (and then forget).
P.S. I added the word “new” to the title because the search engines give me a higher rating with that word there. . . sometimes I find myself caving to such nonsense. If I learned it, then it must be new, eh?