Start of a new year

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Wow, it’s been a bit over a month since I did a blog post. When I get out of the habit, I really slip. Things got busy over Christmas, and we were away for the holidays. I’m just now getting back into the swing of things.

To tell the truth, the real problem is that our son Scott gave us a 47″ flat screen Vizio TV for Christmas and I bought a Vizio home theater sound system to go with it. I also bought a Wii Fitness Plus. I have been in front of that TV for almost all my waking hours, either playing with the Wii or watching movies. The picture and sound are AWESOME and I can’t tear myself away.

One of my New Years resolutions is to become more fit this year, and using the Wii for 90 minutes a day has eaten up a lot of my “play time.” Well, here is a start at getting back into the routine of blogging. 

We went to Big Bear, CA for Christmas, renting a fabulous house on Big Bear Lake with our son Scott and his family. We had a great time. The little granddaughters are so cute. We just love them to pieces. Here’s a photo recap of our vacation.

We had a great view of Big Bear Lake from the house and surrounding deck.

We cooked all of our meals in this wonderful kitchen with granite countertops. Sure wish I had a kitchen at home this nice.

The house featured this nice deck outdoors with covered dining and even a fireplace, but it was too cold to eat outside. Scott did use the grill one night to bbq steaks.

The house appeared to be professionally decorated in "mountain chic." Many of the furniture pieces were works of art.

The little girls loved running up and down the stairs from the main level to the loft, where there was extra sleeping if we had needed it.

This is a view of the living room from the loft. We kept a fire going in the fireplace all day long for our white Christmas in Big Bear.

Megan loved watching her Daddy light the fire and wanted to help by carrying over more logs to put on the fire.

I parked myself in a chair by the fire and read most of the day. Very relaxing.

The lower level was the game room with fireplace and view of the lake from the deck.

The game room had a pool table....

a fabulous wet bar...

And a Christmas tree.

Megan was fascinated by the decorations on the tree.

We fed peanuts to the gray squirrels and Stellars jays that visited the deck.

We unwrapped presents...

Oh, look, Nicole got both a Nintendo Wii and an X-Box Kinect.

Little Megan.

We had some quality time with the grandkids.

Vic helped Lauren work her new puzzle, while Nicole's mother Maria helped Allison. I sat in the middle and helped on both puzzles. The girls tired quickly of the puzzles, which were a bit hard for them, and soon it was just grandparents on the floor with the puzzles! Funny.

The bedroom that we used was beautifully decorated.

The bedroom had a loft, a door to the deck with a lake view, and skylights. We could see the stars at night through the skylight.

Daytime was for snow play. We went to a park in Big Bear, where the girls enjoyed sledding.

Scott, Nicole, Megan, and the twins, Allison and Lauren.

We showed the girls how to have a snowball fight. Their Papa Vic was their favorite target.

The twins did a "run and throw" frontal assault, while Megan attacked from the rear.

Poor Vic. But I don't think he suffered too badly.

After a day of playing in the snow, the little girls went down for naps while this big girl headed for the hot tub. Delightful.

The twins turned five while we were in Big Bear.

Allie loved her big cupcake.

Megan's birthday was several days later, but I let her open the gift from us while we were there. It was a sleeping bag, which her mother said she wanted. When she opened it, she squealed with delight, "It's just what I always wanted my whole life." All three years of it.

A storm was forecast to move in our last day there, arriving around 3 am. Not wanting to drive down mountain roads while it was snowing, we decided to leave that night and avoid the storm. Good decision. Scott has 4WD and chains, but even they left at 6 am to avoid the worst of the storm. Great vacation.

I hope you enjoyed sharing our Christmas vacation in Big Bear with us. One of these days I’ll get back to gardening.

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Harvesting Potatoes and Sunchokes in December

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

It’s Harvest Monday again. (Well, actually it’s Tuesday because I do my newspaper column on Mondays and usually run out of time for blogging). I actually have a decent harvest to report this week ending December 5, because I harvested the German butterball potatoes and sunchokes (Jerusaleum artichokes) that I grew in Smart Pots this summer/fall.

Layer of potatoes that grew about six inches below the surface.

I planted the potatoes (from the farmer’s market because I don’t have enough space in my garden to warrant ordering “seed potatoes” from a catalog) in a layer that was about four inches from the bottom of the pot. I started by cutting German butterball potatoes into pieces,  with an eye showing on each piece, and laying the pieces on the potting soil plus fertilizer. I covered the potatoes with a layer of potting soil and waited until the foliage was about 6-8 inches high before adding more soil. I kept the pot watered and fertilized all summer.

I harvested 2 lbs 9 oz of German butterball potatoes from one Smart Pot.

Once the foliage dies back, the potatoes are ready for harvest. They’ve actually been ready to harvest for a month now, but I just got around to it last week.

I scooped potting soil from the top into another container by hand until I hit a potato layer. No shovel means no cut potatoes.

In theory, the potato plant will send runners off the main shoot and form multi-layers of potatoes. I got two layers of potatoes, which added up to 2 lbs 9 oz. The ads for these fabric Smart Pots claim that you can grow 50 lbs of potatoes in one. I doubt that very much. I don’t think that 50 lbs of potatoes would even fit in one of those pots. If I had gotten another layer of potatoes, I might have ended up with 5-6 lbs, but so far a harvest of about 3 lbs is par for the course.

I’ve grown blue potatoes and German butterballs so far, because they’re expensive at the store. I may try Russets some day just to see what kind of yield a big, heavy potato would give me in a Smart Pot.

I also grew sunchokes in a Smart Pot this year. They are a vegetable from the Great Plains that Native Americans ate. Sunchokes spread like crazy from the little tubers left behind after a harvest, so I didn’t want to plant them in my yard. I had never heard of anyone growing them in a Smart Pot, but I didn’t see why they wouldn’t. Well, they did just fine in the Smart Pot.

I started with organic tubers from the grocery store, planting five cuttings in one pot. Each tuber grew into a multi-stalked sunflower. The sunflowers themselves were pretty puny as far as sunflowers go, with few flowers. But when I dug down for tubers, I was pleased. The plants had put all of their energy into making tubers!

I harvested 3 lbs 4 oz. of sunchokes from one Smart Pot.

Sunchokes taste like artichoke hearts with the texture of potatoes. But they’re not my favorite vegetable because they have a tendency to produce gas. I’m hoping that these modern cultivars will be an improvement in that department. I’ll probably cook some up for lunch. They taste great sauteed with mushrooms and peas. The rest of the tubers will get stored in the refrigerator.

This week's harvest also included a Eureka lemon that fell off the tree and the first snow peas of winter.

The last of the tomatoes in the frig, and a bit of basil from the herb garden, went into a sauce for pasta.

Harvest Monday is also a time to blog about stored produce that was eaten in the past week. The last of our tomatoes in the refrigerator went into a pasta carbonnara sauce that went over ravioli. I have one basil plant that still has a few leaves left on it, and some of those went into the sauce as well. The spinach was from the store.

Dinner from the garden: cheese ravioli with carbonnara sauce and shaved Parmesan, plus a salad of spinach, mushrooms, and mozzarella balls.

This is probably my next to last decent-sized harvest for a while. I’m pinning my last hopes for a harvest in pounds instead of ounces on yams from a Smart Pot, and horseradish from a pot. After that, I expect nothing but greens. Oh, I forgot about the citrus crop. Oranges and lemons will be ripe soon, and that should beef up the harvest poundage totals.

FRUIT

4 oz.  Lemon, Eureka

VEGETABLES

2 lbs 9 oz. Potatoes, German Butterball

1 oz. Snow Peas

3 lbs 4 oz. Sunchokes

Total Produce 6 lbs 2 oz. plus 3 eggs

Visit Daphne’s Dandelions to see what others are harvesting (or using from their harvests) this week.

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A Brief Tour of the Mojave Desert Preserve

Posted on December 3, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Much of the Eastern Mojave Desert is now protected as the Mojave National Preserve. Motorists tend to zip by it on their way between Los Angeles and Las Vegas without giving it a second glance. But the prettiest parts are off the interstate.

The preserve has over a thousand miles of roads, many of them paved, which makes exploration easy. The Automobile Club of Southern California (AAA) has a great map of the area. The National Park Service also has a great map, but you have to know how to get to their visitor center at Kelso Depot to pick it up. Just take Kelbaker Road out of Baker, CA to get there.

Housing at the Desert Studies Center

Vic and I led a field trip for his birding class out there last month. We stayed at the Desert Studies Center in Zzyzx, an adventure in itself. Guests provide their own bedding, towels, soap, shampoo, etc. The bathrooms are open air community bathhouses, mens and womens, with hot and cold running water, curtains on the shower and toilet stalls, and coffee cans over the toilet paper to keep mice from using it as nesting material.

Our room at the Desert Studies Center. We brought our own bedding (sleeping bags) and towels.

Dawn at Lake Tuendae, an artificial pond at Zzyzx

Dawn at Soda Dry Lake

A mirage on Silver Dry Lake. There is no water.

Silver Dry Lake north of Baker, CA

Fall foliage at Horsethief Spring

Antelope Ground Squirrel

Tarantula

Freight train going through Afton Canyon

The Mojave River flows above ground in only three places: Afton Canyon and Upper and Lower Narrows in Victorville. The water flows under the desert sand everywhere else along its course.

Dawn at Zzyzx, day 2

Breakfast in the dining hall. The food was really good.

Corriente cattle are a Mexican breed that is adapted to dry desert life. Unlike other cattle breeds that eat grass and hay exclusively, they can eat browse (tips of bushes) like a deer.

Juvenile Western Fence Lizard

The chef at the Desert Studies Center prepared a nice box lunch for our group.

Red-tailed Hawk

Pancake Prickly Pear

The Visitor Center at Hole-in-the-Wall has no electricity, but it does have running water.

Because this was a birding trip with Vic's class, not a photography trip, I had to grab this shot of Wild Horse Canyon out the car window.

Cooper's Hawk

Animal tracks at Kelso Dunes

Two hikers atop Kelso Dunes

Kelso Dunes at sunset

Providence Mountains at sunset

Sunrise at Soda Lake, day 3

One of Vic's students in a tiny dorm room.

Dawn at Soda Dry Lake

View of Lake Tuendae and Soda Dry Lake from the dorm balcony

Vic's Irvine Valley College bird class in front of a smoke tree.

Pygmy Blue Butterflies in Afton Canyon

Variegated Meadowhawk in Afton Canyon

Fall foliage along the Mojave River in Afton Canyon

Another tarantula

The Mojave River at Harvard Exit near Camp Cady is just drifting sand

Camp Cady, an historic stop along the Mojave Trail

We spent four days out there and barely scratched the surface of things to see and photograph. And this was November! Imagine how pretty it will be with spring wildflowers.

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Harvest Monday, Nov. 29, 2010

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

We just got back from a fabulous Thanksgiving trip to Monterey with son Scott, his wife Nicole, and our three granddaughters. I’ll post photos from that trip later. But first, Harvest Monday. Not much to report, I’m afraid, as we’ve been out of town. Here it is.

Two small yellow onions and a bunch of kale constitute this week's harvest.

VEGETABLES

4.5 oz. kale

3 oz. yellow onions

Total harvest: 7.5 oz. produce and 3 eggs

To see what others might be harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Two weeks of Harvest Mondays and new furniture!

Posted on November 24, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Whew, busy days are keeping me either indoors or out of town, and not so much in the garden. For Harvest Monday last week, I had only three eggs to report, with no fruit or veggies. Not that there wasn’t anything to harvest. I just wasn’t home to cook. I did a little better this week, but not much.

My November garden is looking bedraggled. Time to replant.

Harvest for week ending Nov. 21, 2010

FRUIT

1 Granny Smith apple, the last one, 7 oz

VEGETABLES

1 lb 10 oz. tomatoes

4 oz. yellow onion

TOTAL 2 lbs 2 oz. produce plus 3 eggs

Can you believe that I’m STILL getting tomatoes? Me either. A half dozen tomatoes remain on the vines and one silly plant is still blooming up a storm. I seriously doubt that any of the blossoms will set fruit, but I can’t bear to rip them out while they’re still trying.

The last Granny Smith apple had taken on a pink blush. It was so pretty that I should have photographed it. But I didn’t. I grated it and put it into apple pancakes.

Our chickens are molting and not laying right now except for Chicken Little, so we’re hoarding eggs. I make pancakes instead of eggs for breakfast these days because pancakes take only one egg. We’ll see if we can make it without buying eggs until they start laying again.  With only 2-3 eggs a week from Chicken Little and holiday baking season upon us, I may actually have to (GASP) buy eggs.

Our exciting news isn’t from the garden, though. It’s indoor news. Our new family room furniture arrived yesterday. We’ve been busy the past week clearing the family room of the old stuff and cleaning the carpet.  I had hoped that a Corps Member at the Orange County Conservation Corps would want our old furniture, but alas, there are no kids setting up a new household right now. St. Vincent De Paul hasn’t returned our phone call, so I’m going to try Salvation Army next. Meanwhile, we have extra furniture tucked into every room just to get the new stuff to fit into its space.

Our new furniture has arrived!

For now, our old sofa remains in the family room to provide additional seating.

Our furniture is from Woodworks, an Amish business based in Indiana. It is quarter-sawn American oak stained a medium cherry, with green leather cushions, all handmade. Even the door handles are hand-forged in the US. Nothing from China. 

We got a sofa, glider chair and glider footstool, coffee table, entertainment cabinet, and an additional cabinet to hold my extra cookware. One of the disadvantages of having a hobby of cooking is all those extra pots, pans, appliances and gadgets. They have to go somewhere, hence the new cabinet next to the kitchen counter.

We put our old loveseat into my new artist’s studio in the garage office, which I use regularly. I paint with watercolors a couple of times a week and just love having a nice space in the garage for that hobby.

The old sofa is staying at least temporarily to provide us with enough seating in the family room. One of these days, we may get a loveseat to match the rest of the furniture, assuming that one of the bushes in the garden turns out to be a money plant. Hahaha. Yeah, right.

I want a big flatscreen TV, but for now our old TV will have to do. I haven’t found that money bush yet, but I’m looking.

Our old entertainment center and coffee table are awaiting pickup from some charitable organization. Vic and I actually hated to see the coffee table go. We bought it at a garage sale 30 years ago for $15. It’s homemade with pine 4x4s for legs, very sturdy, stained dark, very 70s. You can’t say that we didn’t get our money’s worth with that piece. Most of our furniture is antique and/or from garage sales, so new furniture is a really, really big deal in our lives.

The other thing that has had me busy is a trip to the Mojave National Preserve with Vic’s birding class, but that’s a tale for another post.

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Harvest Monday, Nov. 8, 2010

Posted on November 9, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I do indeed have a harvest to report this week, despite the record-breaking heat wave last week. The temperatures at John Wayne Airport here in Orange County, CA reported 100 degrees F on both Wednesday and Thursday. No wonder it seemed hot!

On Harvest Mondays, gardeners report what they harvested or what they used from their stored harvests. I’m pleased to report that we ate some of my homemade dill pickles last week. It was too hot to cook, so I just nuked some Hebrew National knockwurst, sliced the sausages, and put them on toast along with mustard and my homemade pickles. Yummy.

I still have onions and garlic from earlier harvests to use in my fall cooking.

Last night, we had a dinner of  beef stew. I used grass-fed beef, raised with no hormones, no antibiotics, and never in a feedlot. Ah, but the beef came from Australia, so I get points subtracted for not eating locally. A lot of fossil fuel got burned bringing that beef to my kitchen. I hope it was less than the fossil fuel that is needed to raise corn and soybeans to feed cattle in a feedlot. I know, a vegetarian meal would have been even more environmentally sound, but we do eat meat once in a while.

Nothing like a bowl of homemade beef stew on a cold autumn evening.

If you’re like me, you make these things up as you go along. In case you’re interested, here is the recipe.

Beef Stew with Barley and Collard Greens

1.5 lbs grassfed beef stew meat cut in 1″ cubes

1/3 C white whole wheat flour

salt

pepper (freshly ground white, green and black peppercorns)

thyme

2 T bacon fat

Dredge the beef chunks in flour with salt, pepper and thyme added to taste. Brown the beef chucks in bacon grease in a large stock pot.

3 small to medium onions (or one large)

1 clove garlic

Add the onions and garlic and continue to brown.

1 C red wine

1 C water

6 tomatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

Add liquid and tomatoes, cover, and cook for one hour before adding vegetables.

6 oz. sliced collard greens, ribs removed

6 carrots, peeled and sliced

6 gold potatoes, scrubbed and cubed

1 C fresh green beans, cut into 1″ pieces

Add the vegetables in the order given, slicing up each new vegetable as the last one was added.

1/2 C barley

1.5 C water

While the vegetables are cooking, cook the barley in water for 45 minutes. Add cooked barley to stew and cook another 15 minutes. Serve with a good bread and a fruit dessert.

My collard greens and the last of our green beans went into this stew, along with homegrown tomatoes and the onions and garlic. Here is our harvest for the week ending November 7, 2010.

Fruit, none

Vegetables

3 oz. chard

6 oz. collard greens

4 oz. cucumber

1 oz. green beans

3 lbs 9 oz. tomatoes

TOTAL 4 lbs 7 oz. produce plus 2 eggs

If you’d like to see what other people around the country are harvesting this week, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Record heat in LA, global weirding!

Posted on November 6, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Pink magnolia tree in bloom in October-November instead of January as usual.

What a crazy year this has been weather-wise. We didn’t get enough heat this summer for my summer or winter squash to produce any fruit. At least I guess that was the problem. Now we’re getting the heat. The thermometer broke records in LA yesterday and the day before, 96 F and 98 F respectively.

Some of my jade plants are blooming. They normally bloom in January. My pink magnolia tree is in full bloom before it has shed its leaves. It normally blooms in January. My Thanksgiving cactus bloomed in Sept/Oct and is finished already. It normally blooms Nov/Dec. Some of my snow drops and paperwhites have bloomed. Others are just now breaking through the ground. Nature has gone haywire.

Black beauty eggplant flower

My Black Beauty eggplants, which didn’t produce a thing all summer, are just now coming into bloom. Some of my tomatoes are still blooming. Ditto the bell peppers. Crazy.

Brandywine tomatoes

The Brandywine tomatoes, which were the last of my varieties to bloom and set fruit, are still producing.

Newly transplanted strawberries wilting in the heat.

A fellow gardener gave me some strawberry plants and irises that she was throwing away due to lack of space in her garden. I had to transplant the strawberries immediately, despite the record heat. The result was wilted plants. The rate of evapotranspiration was greater that the ability of the traumatized roots to take up moisture. I’m trusting that they will recover as the plants were sturdy and healthy. I’m postponing planting the iris for another day or two until the weather cools back down to normal for this season.

white bearded iris

And that’s the way the planet warms. Not with a bang, but a whimper. A few record hot days here and there, and fewer record lows. It isn’t even and it isn’t consistent. But it sure messes up the plants.

Aphid-infested artichokes

The plants are less able to ward off disease and insects. I’ve sprayed my artichokes three days in a row with a heavy stream from the hose, and yet the aphids persist. I’m going to use NEEM next and hope that I can save them.

With global weirding, fruit trees bloom off-schedule. Then they can get caught in a cold snap and fruit set is lowered. My navel orange tree set very little fruit. Then the crazy thing bloomed again in late summer, something I haven’t seen before. Only a few of those blossoms set fruit.

My strategy to combat global weirding is to plant a wide variety of crops and stagger my plantings as best as I can in my tiny garden. I also do whatever I can to reduce use of fossil fuel. Keep those carbon emissions down. And I’ve planted as many trees as I can fit into my yard, as well as in restoration projects around the county in my work with the Orange County Conservation Corps.

The first nine months of this year were the hottest since 1998, which holds the current record for hottest year. The planet is warming, slowly and irregularly, but it’s still warming. The Arctic is warming more than the temperate zone, and for reasons that I don’t understand, that makes weather colder in the winter for places like New England and the upper Midwest. It isn’t just global warming, it’s global weirding.

For all of you out there making your own compost, growing your own food as much as possible, eating vegetarian meals at least some of the time, installing solar electric panels, and driving a hybrid car or riding a bicycle, thanks.

We all need to do whatever we can to reverse the accumulation of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere while there is still time. Once the feedback mechanisms kick in, like melting of the permafrost and release of clathrates from the deep ocean, we’re done for as far as having the kind of stable climate that allowed civilization to develop over the past 10,000 years. I hope that there is still time to reverse what we’ve done.

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Last day, Bridgeport, Bodie and home

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Grasses by Fred's Bait Shop, Bridgeport

October 29, our last day on the photo trip. Although we certainly could have found more things to see and photograph in the next two days, I was tired and quite ready to go home. But not until I got some pictures in Bridgeport and had my fill of photographing the weathered old miners’ houses in Bodie State Park.

Sunrise from Murphey's Motel in Lee Vining

I liked the morning light on these little houses in Lee Vining. It's a scene that I'd like to paint for my watercolor class.

A pastoral scene of sheep in the sagebrush outside Bodie State Park.

Bodie State Park

Old mine buildings at Bodie State Park

Rusted cans, Bodie State Park

Roof, Bodie State Park

Wheelbarrow, Bodie State Park

Old bedframe, Bodie State Park

Road from Bodie

Mule deer

Tule elk

And that’s the day from the point of view of the Nikon. Here’s how the Canon saw it.

Courthouse in Bridgeport, CA

Mallow outside Fred's Bait Shop, Bridgeport

Dun horse, view 1

Dun horse, view 2

Dun horse, view 3

Pinto horse, Bridgeport, CA

Farmhouse, Bridgeport, CA

Bridgeport Community Church

Virginia Creek Settlement Restaurant

Lamp, Virgina Creek Settlement Restaurant

Railing, Virginia Creek Settlement Restaurant

Church, Bodie State Park, CA

White stool, Bodie State Park

House interior, Bodie State Park

Bottles in the window, Bodie State Park

Shadow on the linoleum, Bodie State Park

Kitchen, Bodie State Park

Virginia Lakes

Aspen at Lundy Lake

What a great trip. But I was happy to get home. I miss my hubby when I go on camera outings with the club. I love sharing my photos with him. And with you! Hope you enjoyed them.

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Day Two, photographing Mono Lake and Yosemite with the Canon D30.

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Dawn at Mono Lake

Mono Lake

Aspen by Mono Lake

Frost on aspen leaves

frosted leaves on sagebrush

Historic 1922 roadhouse by Mono Lake

roadhouse

Wild California rose

leafy path just outside the eastern side of Yosemite National Park

Lee Vining Creek

Path through the aspens by Lee Vining Creek, late October

Lee Vining Creek, late October

leaves in creek

Ice crystals by Lee Vining Creek, late October

Rainbow colors on ice crystals

Logs in creek

Clouds over Yosemite

autumn foliage over creek

Road in autumn just outside Yosemite National Park

Ice on twigs

Ellery Lake, Yosemite National Park

Tree

Creek

winter grasses

Creek coming out of Saddlebag Lake

Fish Creek Hot Springs near Mammoth

June Lake Loop

Aspen along June Lake loop, late October

I hope you enjoyed this little tour around the Mono Lake and Yosemite National Park areas. Next post will be Bridgeport and Bodie on the next and last day of the trip.

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Day Two, photographing fall foliage from Mono Lake to Mammoth

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

We got up before dawn to get shots of sunrise over Mono Lake. We were at the visitor center, which didn’t have the best foreground. Apparently the rest of the club was at the South Tufa Towers. Live and learn. Either place, the sunrise was spectacular.

The colors of this sunrise were spectacular, and ranged from hot yellow-orange-red to cool pink and blue, depending on camera settings.

By letting in a lot of light, the foreground shows up, but the colors in the sky got washed out.

sunrise at Mono Lake

These colors are fully saturated.

I loved the grays and yellows of sunrise over the Panum Craters.

With the intense colors of sunrise over, we moved to another location closer to the lake.

Frosted plant on frozen mud. Did I mention the temp was 19 degrees F?

Deergrass in morning light at Mono Lake

Golden grasses in morning light at Mono Lake

Tufa towers in morning light, Mono Lake, CA

Coyote tracks frozen in the mud

Historic 1922 roadhouse, Mono Lake

Roof with leaves, historic 1922 roadhouse, Mono Lake

 

Mono Lake in morning light from historic roadhouse

 

red bark

 

Yosemite National Park, eastern side, near Tioga Lake

 

Pinecone, pebbles and ice, Lee Vining Creek, Yosemite National Park
I think I’ll put the photos from the Canon of this day’s shoot in a separate post.
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