Following up on Earlier Subjects

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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.

  1. Remember in the Learned in March post that I showed you chocolate navels? This is how they look on the inside.
  2. Remember seeing this table in progress?This is how it turned out.
  3. Did I mention anything about going around the neighborhood with clippers and buckets to pick wildflowers? This is how they were used.
  4. Still nothing to report on the two murals in the courtyards at St. Charles, the largest Catholic church in North America, in Visalia, where I was asked to paint some murals back in October. I redid the contract to reflect the increase in mural paint prices and the customer’s request that I train someone to paint a third mural, someone who doesn’t speak English or have experience. The saga continues. . .

Early Morning Walk in Three Rivers

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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.

Fifteen Years of Blah-blah-blah Blogging

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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.

Thank you for listening, reading, looking, hanging around, commenting, caring, being there all these years!

P.S. Happy Birthday, Hiking Buddy! I mailed you a card yesterday, but it might have to go to Santa Clarita first. Could have walked it to you faster, but you know about my feet these days. . . May you be warmed and filled today.

Nine New Things Learned in March

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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).

  1. Masonite can only be ordered in 100 sheet bundles so local builder supply stores don’t stock it; you must go to one of those dreaded big box stores.
  2. Three Rivers Drug Store closed. They’ve been in our town since 1963, and it will be quite an inconvenience for many residents.
  3. Making ricotta cheese looks easy when one reads the recipes; in reality, it’s a different story.I ended up with about 1/2 cup of very squishy cheese and a whole lot of whey to use in baking bread. It might make sense to make ricotta if one owned a cow and had a tremendous amount of milk to use up. I’ll stick to making yogurt.
  4. People need to keep their culverts cleaned out, even in dry years. If they don’t, they will lose parts of their driveways in wet years.
  5. The Mineral King road is wrecked; it will get fixed. (That is Tulare County’s problem).
  6. The East Fork flume is wrecked; it might get fixed. (That is SCE’s problem).
  7. Chocolate navels are very peculiar in appearance, and mild in flavor. They do NOT taste like chocolate; the name comes from the brownish color. I wonder how they’ll do in the markets.
  8. Ringing the bell is something that cancer patients do when they complete chemotherapy. I learned this from a blog I follow, called The Frugal Girl. Someone in the comments mentioned that she “rang the bell”, and many of the other commenters congratulated her, so I looked it up.
  9. The liquid surrounding canned beans is called “aquafaba” and can be used as a substitute for eggs in baking. It can also be whipped up like egg whites. Isn’t that bizarre?? I regret all the gallons I have wasted when making hummus: “drain the beans”. . . NO!! DON’T DRAIN THEM!! THINK OF THE COST OF EGGS!

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?

Bonus: Spring Walk in Three Rivers

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This is an afternoon walk at Salt Creek earlier this week. No chit-chat, no April fooling, just photos.

Springtime Takes Precedence over Work

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Instead of showing you my current art projects or discussing the unending challenges and rewards of being a fulltime artist in Tulare County, today is another bonus peek at spring in Three Rivers.

These photos were taken on Friday morning.

Tomorrow I’ll show you my current odd job.

Spring in Three Rivers

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There have been ongoing diversions and distractions lately. In spite of loving what I do for a living, there are many things I would rather do when it is spring in Three Rivers.

Early last week it snowed low again. The white snow on the peaks blended with the white sky, so all you can see is a tiny hint of Moro Rock.

The measuring stick on the downstream side of the Dinely Bridge got washed away in the flooding.

This is looking upstream, and maybe you can get a slight hint of how low the snow is.

I spent some time helping friends prepare the yard where their daughter’s wedding will be. We kept taking breaks because of the rain.

She wants to get married in front of that tipi thing.

I had a little trouble being efficient with my time, because the four black cattle (cows are females that have given birth; these are either heifers or steers, for beef) kept asking for my prunings, and the smaller black creature kept wanting me to toss the Frisbee. 

Did you know that black steers have dark gray tongues? I didn’t. It was very challenging to capture that peculiarity with a camera. 

You can see a little bit of the tongue on the left side of the photo.

They were highly entertaining.

Apparently they thought I was too.

This reminds me of a joke about some guys at a diner. They asked about the special, and when they were told it was cow tongue, one of them said, “Oh gross! I’d never eat anything that came out of a cow’s mouth. I’ll just have some eggs.”

One of the trees I was pruning was a Meyer lemon, and it inspired me to take this photo.

Meanwhile, it was raining on the flowering quince, which is usually in bloom around mid-February. Not this year!

Another chance to soak up the brilliant color of the fantastic germander.

I love spring in Three Rivers. Can you tell?

Morning Walk up Salt Creek

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This morning I went for a walk up Salt Creek (Bureau of Land Management property). It was so beautiful that it warrants an extra blog post of photographs.

The first photo was taken at the Dinely bridge while waiting for my walking buddy to arrive. The rest are on the BLM property.

There is a new parking lot at the top of Salt Creek Road, but the gate prevents anyone from using it. We went that way because the 2 footbridges crossing Salt Creek got washed away.

 

This is the side trail to that pond, obliterated now.

This used to have a nice footbridge across it. Now there is no footbridge at all, nice or otherwise.

 

With a bit of warmth, the redbud will be popping out soon. (It already is in yards in Three Rivers.)

Enjoying Life Before the Storms

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A day before the big storm, there was a brief time of sunshine. It lit up this germander, a drought tolerant shrub that looks great in spring and horrid in summer.

That evening, Jackson did not want to be put away. He decided to walk the other way and then attempt to catch his own dinner. I walked around the yard calling for him, and of course, he ignored me. However, I found him. Can you see his tail?

He was very intensely focused on some quail which feed around dusk, which is when we feed our cats.

Dude, I am watching you, and you are not going to catch a quail. 

He showed up at the front door looking for entry to the workshop where his dinner was waiting. Michael walked him over, and put him away for the night.

The next day was so intensely green and my leaning tree was in full bloom. (It’s a flowering pear, one of the earliest trees to bloom and one of the last to hold its color in the fall.)

Eventually I made it into the workshop (the cats’ safe place at night) to get a little painting done.

The first one is called Below Terminus Dam. I love this view in spite of it not having snow-covered peaks in the distance. Some years there are poppies on the distant hills; it is too soon to know this year because we are having a real winter.

This is the commissioned piece, now finished. (The right side looks darker because I am casting a shadow on it.)

This is the painting that was giving me trouble. I’ve decided that it is finished now.

This concludes today’s post about your Central California artist enjoying spring, her recalcitrant cat, her yard, and painting her favorite Tulare County scenes. 

Thank you for visiting my blog today.

 

Walk on the Mineral King Road

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This is your photojournalist reporting in from an excursion taken today, Saturday, March 18, 2023. Trail Guy, The Farmer, and I drove about 4 miles up the Mineral King road, then continued on foot. There will be many many photos (I took 92 but will only show you 47—you are welcome), and a little explanation or commentary.

The Road Closed sign is barely visible here below Mile 4.

A friend was doing a similar excursion and began the same time we did. Trail Guy advised him to climb up to the flume for easier walking, because his destination was farther up the road than ours.

Common sight.

Ho-hum, another big rock.

Mud, road a little bit gone.

And yet another rock.

And another chunk gone.

Wait, are you telling me we could have driven another 1/2 mile up?? Apparently so.

Whoa. This is the big washout. I bet Mineral King folks will forever refer to this as Washout Corner, or Washout Canyon.

We had a little bit of boulder scrambling to do.

Then some water to cross.

Looking back at the mess.

About 1/2 mile farther up from the mess.

Standard mud-on-road.

Oh-oh. Are we finished? The road certainly is. This is at Skyhook.

Nope, we are not done. The Farmer scrambled up the bank to the flume, pronounced it doable, and we followed. 

Our friend caught up with us on the flume, and we pulled aside to let him pass because he was on a mission to check on a man who lives farther up the road. We were just ogling, on a mission to see things.

We climbed down.

And headed down a paved road to the real road…

…only to discover we were on the uphill side of Skyhook. The flow went right through the center of the property.

I want to go to the bridge.

In the days before the flood, this would have been considered a disaster. Now, it’s merely another blip on the screen of the Winter of Water.

Bear Canyon survived. It appears to be abandoned, so even if it got washed away, no one would care. (what a waste)

Another muddy section.

And yet another one. I waded through this one in barefeet. 

By the time I got to this muddy mess, I just walked through in my trusty hiking Crocs.

Such a beautiful flow of water in this canyon after too many dry years.

MY FAVORITE BRIDGE IS FINE!!

Rocks, mud, no big deal.

Happy Centennial, Oak Grove Bridge!

Looking upstream.

Looking downstream.

Just looking.

And looking.

Time to turn around and head back to the pick-em-up truck. 

Whoa. Is this a new disaster waiting to happen to the flume just below the bridge? Or are we seeing with new eyes, filtered for impending doom?

Here’s the abandoned Bear Canyon.

Climbing up to the flume just above Skyhook.

I really like walking the flume. Not supposed to do it.

Our friend told us that the flume had blown apart or been smashed by a tree, so he had to do some scrambling and crawling. We got to this yellow tape, and climbed down the steps to the access road.

This is the access road onto the flume, opposite the very wide spot in the road below the bridge.

We walked back without incident, happy to be alive, thankful for rain, thankful to be able to walk 5 miles, thankful for springtime, thankful for friendship, just thankful.

And looking forward to seeing repairs by the Tulare County Roads Department. But I bet the people at Skyhook and those on above are looking forward to that road work even more than we are.

Thanks for coming with me on this tour. Batten the hatches, because there is another storm coming our way tomorrow.