Just sitting there.  We have a few on our mantel, so we left this one to be discovered by someone else.  Low tide is nice, for walking and for finding things, on a sunny day by the sea.

I guess I don’t get tired of them.  Love the orange on the water and the hint of pink below the clouds.   Then there’s that thin band of lemon-yellow, rather surprising.

It drizzled half-heartedly for about an hour this afternoon.  All those clouds, so little rain.

I wasn’t sure which I wanted and then realized I could have both.  Much better to choose, though, than to say ‘none of the above.’  And that’s all I’ll say about that.  For now, anyway.  And it is a glorious sky and it is a majestic tree.  The blue veins in the clouds are my favorite.

It’s a whole world of physics and geometry there, in circles and arcs and rivulets and waves.  This is a color photo but to me it’s most striking not in its color, but in its grayness that just emphasizes its horizontal layers of texture, its repetition, its variation, the darks against lights, the sense of movement in some areas and the calm in others, and, finally, the curl of a wave-top breaking — in short, the things oceans do near the shore.

Pretty forbidding looking, isn’t it?!  I would guess the ground squirrels give it a wide berth — or can they burrow under it and be well-protected?

Some kind of cactus.  Or, as E.B. White might have penned, “Some Cactus!”  Our unseasonably warm weather must be making it thirsty.  A drizzle might descend in the next day or two, and that just might turn this from dusty gray-brown to a more vibrant green.  I’ll check it out.  Eventually.

So painterly, as they say!  The sky was glorious around 10:30 am.

Would Bob Ross have called them ‘happy little clouds?’  Not sure, but they made me smile, brushed lightly onto that brilliant blue!

So, when you realize you didn’t take a walk, that it’s after 10 pm and the day got away from you, and you want/need a photo for your blog, what do you do?  Why, you grab your camera (phone) and dash into the teensy area called your back yard, and stumble around a bit in the dark, and remember there are white roses out there, and turn the settings on the phone camera to “flash on” and point the thing at the area where you think there are roses, and click on the camera icon.

Upon doing so, the scene seen (haha) by the camera shows itself briefly, there’s a nice audible ‘click,’ and then you get to see what the camera saw.  Three times in a row it’s bad and blurry and blown out (camera lingo) and the fourth time it’s ok.

So there’s ok up there, a beacon of white bright light, pertly and smugly being itself.  Well, maybe not smug.  I guess a rose can be pert, but it’s way too much anthropomorphism to say smug, do you think?  It’s definitely a night light, though.

What I don’t know about plants: everything.  I mean, it’s a palm and these are its little fruits.  They turn dark purple-black.  They hang in bunches like mini-grapes.  They fall off all over the patio.  It’s easy to sweep them up.  They don’t seem to squish.  They’re kind of cute, don’t you think?

I think I’m addicted to these kinds of days.  Gentle rain off and on all morning, and doesn’t that blue central cloud look like it’s reaching down to pat the ocean?  And that purple behind it?

I find these colors almost wistful.  The way they modulate and blend and then suddenly you’re not talking about blue and purple but about green, a gorgeous gray-green that sets off the white foam just perfectly.

I think there’s even a hint of pink.  Peeking out shyly.

I’ve never lived anywhere that had so many different purple flowers. The white tips are such a sharp accent.  And I even put [temporary] purple in my hair today!

Something about stairways and railings and shadows…and even better with a sprinkling of sand.  I wonder if beach stairways look like this everywhere, or at least where they are built of wood.  You can also see the ubiquitous stones that seem to either wash in and out with the tide or — alternative explanation — get covered and uncovered by the shifting sand.

The cliffs behind are slowly eroding away; there are signs warning that they are unstable.  Makes me wonder how safe the stairways are, but I try not to think about that!

Of another sort.  And so artfully arranged.  We didn’t see anyone around and wondered if they had been collected, randomly, from abandoned toys, or were just being nicely stored while the owner was away playing in the water.  It’s been unseasonably warm (high 70s and 80s) so there has been more activity than usual on the beach.  Fun!

They’re what’s for supper.  These sand patterns…well, you can tell they grab me.  There’s a local photographer who enhances and colorizes and abstracts them as part of his body of work.  I like them just as they are.  But that’s just me.

Arranging itself so perfectly.  Yellow and gray.  That was a popular color scheme in the early ’50s, I think.  It works well.  Late afternoon, stunning day. Soft sun, around 70, light breeze.  It’s great to be back to beach-walking!

Though it seems cloud-like.  Back to my first SoCal beach discovery: the patterns left by the sprinkle of lighter-colored sand being pulled away from the underlying magnetic, darker sand —  by wave action.

This example seemed unusually wispy and cloud-like, perhaps wind-blown in appearance.  The very darkest sand is dramatic, and looks like a broad swath of charcoal.  The whole photo has the texture of a charcoal drawing.  Maybe I’ll get out my charcoal and try some sketching, beach or otherwise.

It looked like the sky before the storm and then the sun broke through and there were patches of blue emerging.  We could have used a good deluge.  But this sure made a good photo.  The former “good” would have been better!

Wow.  Who could invent that?  A tangle, yet organized.  Gnarled, straight, curved.  Light, dark .  Thin, thick.  Twisted, almost spiraling.

And look at the negative space.  That strong yet gentle blue peeking through.  Painted on the backdrop.  Hints of fluffy white clouds barely there.

Autumn is a wonderful season.

Such a wonderful form.  And such great symmetry and colorful non-color.  Dry and rich.  Shadows.  Depth.  Thank you, phone camera; thank you, California flora!

In the hills of Encinitas, the next town south of us.  The scrub is scrubbier than ever, just a tangle of grayish brittle dryness.  I took photos of several types of — foliage? — it doesn’t seem like foliage when it’s not green.  The various forms are just as noticeable yet seem forlorn.  May we have some rain this winter, please?  I would be delighted to get out my turquoise-on-black polka-dot boots!

They’re on the scrub brush that’s ubiquitous near the  beach.  Some of them are brighter red, others orange, and then I think they turn brown.  They are about 1/4″ long, no more.  I’ll try to notice how long they’re there.  In three years, I’ve not seen them before.  But it’s been warm far longer than usual.  Which, unfortunately —  I hope not tragically — is a common statement about climate change.

OK, you can guess.  Is it a Wisconsin sky or a California sky?

This picture follows the ones from our trip to Wisconsin and I had to check the date on it.  We marveled so at the “big skies” of the Midwest, but none of those photos came out well.  This is actually an unusual California sky — not rare, exactly, but not all that frequently seen.  Taken just a few days after we returned.

They look constructed, rather than grown.  They look like mathematical models of some strange underlying chemical relationship.  They look whimsical.  They look alien.  They look a bit like something growing somewhere unsavory.  I mean, really unsavory!  (Pun intended.  Or maybe it isn’t actually a pun.)

Were they bred to look like this, to grow like this?  And is the stalk edible?  And those mini-stick-things that stick out?   Who figured it out, anyway?  I do have similar questions about artichokes.  People must taste just about everything, or who would possibly have tasted these things?  And figured out how to cook them, too!  Who figured out you could scrape your teeth on an artichoke’s petal (?  — well, it’s the flower, so isn’t it the petal?) and get something edible?  And that the ‘heart’ is edible.  And that you should dip them in melted butter, or even mayonnaise.   Amazing, what we eat and how we eat it.

Brussels sprouts, which kids call ‘Brussel sprouts’ because they don’t know about the city.

They sure are pretty.

Wouldn’t be my favorite color scheme to wear or decorate with — but nature just does a perfect job.  I love the leaves that have both pink and green — the genetic code that does the coloration must have a sharing algorithm!

Actually I think these are still functional.  Right in front of the mural. The carved and painted post, the painted boxes, and, especially, the rust — all such great complements to the peeling wall,  Cardiff is wonderful in many ways.

A mural in Cardiff, an area of Encinitas, the next town south of us.  I think it’s splendid decay, and so evocative.  The white areas are very map-like, yet reaching animal-like tentacles into the area of the flower.  The fading colors, the encroaching of the peeling, the sort of bubbling-up of the surface — all provide so much metaphor on just a few square feet of wall.  I can hardly imagine it could have been more compelling when it was freshly painted.

Well, more than just that.  Ripeness.  Intensity.  Reflection.  Globular shape.  Cool stems.  Incipient yummy-ness.

Another treat from the Madison Farmers’ Market.  We ate several treats there, too.  But I didn’t take pictures of them: empanadas, spicy cheese bread –warm and yeasty and my absolute favorite Madison specialty, which is saying a lot! and smoothies and a cinnamon roll and whoopie pies.  The cinnamon roll was from the same source as the cheese bread and really top-notch.  The empanadas and whoopie pies less so.  But that’s not complaining, just comparing…  Looking at that list, I will confess we had salads later in the day to compensate for all those super carbs!

The bounty at Madison’s Saturday Farmers’ Market is impressive.  I’d never seen yellow oyster mushrooms before.  Aren’t these beautiful?  We didn’t do any cooking while we were there, so I guess I can try these another time.  They also reminded me of trumpet vine!

This was the decor in a Madison restaurant, one of many piles in the deep windowsill.  Somehow the stripped-down books without their bindings are compeling in their rough texture, uneven color, fuzziness, and warmth.  The jute (hemp?) string adds another dimension.  And it doesn’t seem disrespectful, merely getting down to the essential.

What mysteries, what eloquence, what agonies and ecstasies are bound in these un-bindings?  The texts, the print, the paper; the stories, the context, the narrative —  they are just possibility, awaiting the untying.  Tantalizing, visually and conceptually, I think.