Walk Through The Park Reflected Through Photoshop

As I walked the park path I noticed strict segregation.  The mallards were in the water on the left side of the path.

[This is using the colored pencil filter.  It minimizes the ducks that were scattered over this pond, but I couldn't resist the glow on the tops of the trees in the background.]

On the other side of the path were the Canada geese.

[The ended up with the Fresco filter.  All I can say is the others were worse.]

Another area had robins all over the lawn.  And this one in the tree.  

[This resulted from playing with curves in the image tab.]

Then this row of trees.  

[First curves and then the - oh dear, I forgot which filter.]

And then it began to rain.  This was the picture that made me go play with Photoshop in the first place.  The ripples weren't all that interesting in my original picture, so I played around.

[If my notes are right, this is ink outline (filter) in the center and poster edge on the outside.]

Posts like this one let me experiment with Photoshop a bit.  Unfortunately, my life is too busy right now to seriously work on new Photoshop skills that are more significant.  But there are countless websites and videos online to help you learn to do all sorts of things with Photoshop.  I'm starting to work on a book for my grandson and then I'll need to study hard to do some of the things I'm thinking about.  

A Little Rain Makes Me Think About Life After Humans

It rained overnight in LA.

Looking at the drops left on the leaf reminds me that nature follows set patterns.  We talk about human caused global warming harming the earth.  But 'harm' is in the eye of the beholder.

The earth will change, but it will survive.  How humans and other living things will survive is another story.  Some argue that without humans,  the non-human living things will thrive.  The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement calls for people to stop procreating.  There's even two seasons of Life After People on History.com.  (A quick look suggests that all the pollutants we've already created and have sitting around will cause massive harm.)


UPDATE 8:45pm:  The rain got more serious later in the day:

Been Raining, Creek's Rising, But Nothing Serious

Took advantage of a long break in the rain as well as in my lethargy to get on the bike and move my legs.  The rain's made an obvious difference on Campbell Creek.

Last time I looked, that picnic table was on gravel.  (This is near Campbell Creek park.)

I went on.



There was a bit a blue sky reflected in a puddle on the bike trail.















And when I got near the State Troopers Headquarters, I saw the only white stuff near the mountain tops was cloud.   It's September 23, and no termination dust so far.

Then up the new bike trail along Campbell Airstrip Road.  You can see a greener version of this spot about a month ago here.

I figured the bridge at the Campbell Airstrip trailhead would be a good place to turn around.  That gives me about 9 miles round trip.

Here is today's picture on top of one 11 days ago.  I wanted to compare the water levels.  If you click on the image, it will enlarge and sharpen and if you look carefully you can see differences in the water level.  But nothing like the picnic table.





Here's looking to the west from the bridge.  On this one the water level is more apparent.  The gravel bank is now an island, and there's white water along the left bank.  Again, clicking on it will enlarge it.









On the way home, I stopped on the viewing platform that just reopened a couple of weeks ago.  There's a little stream of water coming in from the east.  There's a much bigger one coming from the west (the creek flows basically east to west but has various loops.)


I'm not quite sure what I thought the many other times I've been at this spot.  Maybe it was the bright yellow/orange of the birch tree, but I focused on this little water way coming in from the left (east).  I wondered how Campbell Creek had gotten so small.


Then I looked right (west) to see the much larger flow of water.  I think I'd always thought this was a loop in the creek, but both bodies of water were flowing toward the platform and the little one essentially joined the bigger one.  Were these two different creeks?


Humility is a good trait.  All these years and I never even thought about this.






So when I got home I checked the maps.












The red is the reduced sized platform (see this post) with the boardwalk from the bike trail.  You can see clearly from the map the one from the east is the North Fork of Campbell Creek and the one from the west is the South Fork.  Unless you go out onto the platform, you never see the North Fork join the South Fork.






Below is a map of the Campbell Airstrip road a few miles east of the top map.  We still have both the north and south branches of the creek.  The bridge I took the pictures (above) from is the red rectangle going over the south fork.  The bike trail ends at the turnout for the Campbell Airstrip trailhead.  The new bike trail ends just before the bridge over the north fork of the creek.  I took that bridge picture for the post about the new bike trail.  The pics are there just to help anyone who's trying to connect the pictures and the location.

Click on image to enlarge

28 Days Into March, We Finally Get Some Snow

It's been days and days of, in the words of Dan Bern, relentless sun.  He was singing about Southern California, and we aren't complaining, but it ended during the night and we got a little more than a trace of snow.

And it's warmer.  Yesterday we were in the mid 30s (F), and this morning's clouds were accompanied by 31˚F on our home thermometer as I write.  We really hadn't been above freezing at all this month with night temps regularly in the single digits.  We were cooler than normal.  As opposed to last year when we had very little snow, warm temperatures, and I posted this picture of rain drops on March 28, 2016.

And just in case anyone reading this is thinking, "See, it's colder this year, so climate change isn't really anything to worry about,"  should listen to Neil DeGrasse Tyson in the  2 minute National Geographic video below.  

The Cloudspotter's Guide Says Cumulus Radiatus [UPDATED]

Text is coming, but we're headed to the La Brea Tar Pits with our granddaughter, so first you get the pictures, then I'll add more later.  Let's just say, it was a beautiful day, and then the clouds came and it started raining yesterday afternoon and it's still raining today.

This is the updated part Dec. 22, 2016 9:30 pm (Pacific Time):

My son gave me a copy of The Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney for my birthday earlier this year and I took it on this trip thinking we might see some clouds.

As I started reading, I realized this is NOT your typical dry, scientific expert guidebook.

"If a glorious sunset of Altocumulus clouds were to spread across the heavens only once in a generation, it would surely be amongst the principal legends of our time.  Yet most people barely seem to notice the clouds, or see them simply as impediments to the 'perfect' summer's day, an excuse to feel 'under the weather'.  Nothing could be more depressing, it seems, than to have 'a cloud on the horizon'."

It turns out Wednesday this week in LA was an exceptional day and luckily we were able to spend the afternoon at the beach with our granddaughter, making sand castles, and playing tag with the surf as it went out.  It was warm and delightful.  The picture below is of Santa Monica Bay from Venice Beach.

And having read the introduction of the book, I was more interested than worried as clouds formed on the south western horizon and seemed headed our way.

I had read most of the chapter on cumulus clouds too.  These are low clouds.  According to the visual table of contents, which shows different clouds at different altitudes along with the Chapter name and number, cumulus clouds stay under 10,000 feet.  They also are the most commonly rendered clouds in art work from children's books to classical painting.  And they tend not to mean rain.





The author tells us that clouds are classified by genus and species and varieties, which made me feel pretty ignorant since I didn't know that. Animals and plants, yes, but clouds?  That was new to me.  Four species of cumulus cloud are listed:  humilis, mediocris, congestus. and fractus.  And one variety is listed for mediocris - radiatus.
It says about radiatus:

"When cumulus have formed into rows, or 'cloud streets', which are roughly parallel to the wind direction."

Now, the title of this post is a bit misleading.  The Cloudspotter's Guide didn't say that the clouds I saw were radiatus.  I read the book and looked at these clouds and thought - this must be what the book was talking about:  radiatus.

By that Thursday morning there were a lot more clouds and by evening it was raining.  But The Cloudspotter's Guide does say:

"Although Cumulus is generally associated with fine weather, any cloud can under certain conditions develop into a rain-bearing formation, and Cumulus is no exception.  The innocuous Cumulus humulis and mediocris  can on occasions grow into the angry, towering Cumulus congests, which it must be said is anything but a fair-weather cloud."

It was still raining when we left this morning, but cleared up in the afternoon.  Spent the day in the Pleistocene era -with giant sloths, mastodons, and other late ice age creatures.  More on that in another post.

Grey, Then Rainy LA Day

We got in last night.  Set off the alarm in my mom's house and it took us a while to figure out how to shut it off.  Slept in late.  The house and yard are looking better.  When I open drawers, many are completely empty.  Others have just a few things in them.  We've gotten most of the stuff into the garage.







There were heavy clouds all day and I finally got my body out the door to mail the bills and pick up a book at the bookstore, then circled back through Marina del Rey down to Venice Pier, then along the beach and back.

It wasn't raining when I started.  It was drizzling lightly when I left the book store, a little more on the way home.  And now the streets are wet.

Mushrooms And Other Signs Of Rain

While July was the warmest month on record in Anchorage, ever, August, while not cold, has seen its fair share of rain.



The most easily identified Anchorage mushroom is this Amanita - Fly Agaric.  It opens up and looks like a small pizza (up to about 10 inches across).  Books say it's poisonous, but I've come to learn for Alaska mushrooms that tends to mean hallucinogenic.  I included some of that discussion in this 2007 post.

These are up to about six or seven inches across.  Wasn't quite sure what they were after a quick look through my field guide to mushrooms.

Some lichens and mosses growing on the deck.

This appears to be a polypore.  It was growing out of the ground, not on a tree.  It's about five inches across.

 Some raindrops on a nasturtium leave.

Reflections in a little puddle in a garbage can lid.

What I belief is a rosy russula.  The stem is also slightly pink.

The top and underneath of what I think is a tacky green russula.  It says they're good eating.

And the worms in the compost pile are doing their job.  As I turned things over with a shovel, I could feel the heat as nature turns our kitchen waste and leaves to compost.


Some posts that haven't gotten linked to the blogrolls that you might find interesting:

Walkable Cities Circa 1669
If Women Relate Their Own Gender Battles To Clinton's, She Wins Big
Man Goes
Who Invented Inflatable Tube Guys?

Trying To Catch The Rain

A brush fire was growing last Wednesday and folks living on the southern edge of town were starting to pack things as they cleared the brush around their homes and made other preparations to protect their homes.

Thursday morning we could smell the smoke in midtown Anchorage.  But it also rained some.  It rained again on Friday and Saturday.  But there wasn't a lot of rain.  Enough to give fire fighters the edge.  Today it rained on and off all day, some of the time hard.

And I tried to catch some of that hard rain with my camera.  Not very well.  Mostly after it hit the table on the deck.   But here's the evidence and one day I hope to show that I can look back with satisfaction when I've learned to do this better.  It gets a little  sharper if you click on it.