First Wildflower Walk

 

Two weeks ago a couple friends and I went on a hike in nearby Foothill Regional Park, hoping to see some wildflowers. It was a glorious day - sunny but not hot, perfect for a walk.

This park has a good amount of dead and crooked trees, and you know how much I love these.

It didn't take long until we saw the first tiny wildflowers - Mediterranean Stork's Bill. As the name implies, it's not a native.

Foothill has a few ponds and after a short climb we arrived at the first one.

The unique call of the Red-winged Blackbird was easily heard all around the pond, accompanied by the deep bass of a bullfrog.

We took a shady trail around the second pond where again I was happy to see more dead and crooked trees.

The views of the pond were beautiful.

In October and November 2019, Foothill Park badly burned in the Kincade Fire, a wildfire that caused widespread evacuations throughout Sonoma County and was the largest of the 2019 California wildfire season. There are still numerous burnt trees in the park that now offer a wonderful habitat for all kinds of birds. I've seldom seen so many Acorn Woodpeckers in one place. It is amazing how nature comes back after a natural disaster if we don't mingle and clean everything up.

The Western Fence Lizard certainly felt at home here.

Can you find the turtle?

Hairy Vetch was almost everywhere - it's not a native plant either. It is used as a cover crop and I guess at one time it "escaped" and did its own happy thing, spreading all over the county and beyond. Even though it can be quite invasive, I really like it.

Finally we came upon this meadow of Sky Lupines, a California native. These are my favorite lupines.

Pairing them with our California Poppy is simply fabulous. It was still a bit early for the poppies.

We found a lovely bench under a tree where we stopped and had a little snack while listening to the Red-winged Blackbirds and the bullfrog.

A last view before we returned to the car - it won't stay that green for very much longer.

Here is an AI watercolor rendering of my two friends, so perfectly framed by a tree branch. This is for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

Some of you asked about this app. I have a Google Pixel 6a smartphone that I bought because of its excellent camera. When Google introduced its own AI, Gemini, it became available for the photo app as well, and that is what I use.

The Winter Forest

 

Here in coastal Northern California just an hour North of San Francisco our forests are not covered with snow in the winter. What you see is a forest of mostly deciduous trees that let the sun through. This is more than welcome in the winter, but in summer they give lovely cool shade.

Our neighboring town to the North is bordered by a lovely regional park that offers a lot of that kind of forest. Lovely trails meander through the forest and up the sometimes rather steep hills. In the photo above you can also spot a fence in the distance. This is to fence in the goats and sheep that come in to graze and thus cut down all the undergrowth. Perfect wildfire prevention.

The park was closed for quite some time because of the Kincade Fire that raced through it in the fall of 2019. Scars of that wildfire are still visible.

At the same time we saw a lot of new growth. It never stops to amaze me how nature bounces back after natural disasters.

I'm not sure what this wildflower is (if you recognize it, please let me know), but the one below is a Pacific Hound's Tongue (Cynoglossum grande). I often wonder who gives the names to plants...

Many of the trees - mostly oaks - are quite crooked and create great shadows.

We climbed up to one of the highest points of the park which was unpleasantly steep. We had to go down the same way and my knees weren't happy about it. But the view from the top was fantastic.

Over to the Coastal Range...

... and to Mount St. Helena in the Mayacamas Mountains. Mount St. Helena is one of the peaks that is covered in snow when we have those really cold (for our area) days and nights.

The park also has several canyons which is highly loved by wildfires because they can race through it fueled by wind with little chance to stop it quickly. We walked down one of those canyons along a less traveled trail from where we could see the charred trees.

But we also noticed the renewal of these trees. How very amazing!

I simply love the texture of the "fresh" tree trunks after the charred bark is gone.

We finally arrived at one of the three ponds that are creatively named after the first letters of the alphabet. This is pond B.

There's a lovely loop around the pond. On our way back to the parking lot we passed pond A where we stopped and enjoyed the quietness.

This was a lovely outing with a beautiful hike. The weather has been warm and spring like. Even for this area these temperatures are unseasonally warm and we do worry about another dry year. There is no rain in the forecast. I'm grateful that we had some decent rainfall in the fall, but it is by far not enough to get us out of the drought. I'm hoping for March which usually is a wetter month - fingers crossed!