Last Sunday

Last Sunday we took a field trip into family history.  In working on Mom's pictures again, getting them cropped and reorganized before burning to CD's, Larry got back into the genealogy thing.  It's been a few years and more stuff was online than before so he made some headway again.

He was able to follow my Mom's Dad's line all the way to the first of his people to hit American soil from England.  The Carrington's landed in America in 1837, lived in Princeton, N.J. for about 22 years and then came to Sacramento via the Isthmus.  They have a plot in the Historic City Cemetery in Sacramento and as there is a huge historic rose garden there too, we had to go check it out.

The rose garden has over 200 varieties of historic bushes that had been collected from all over the country, it was beautiful.  There are many other beautiful flowers and trees too.  Enjoy.

The family plot, half of which was covered by an enormous rose bush.

Me looking at the rosebush.

Larry taking notes.

Bye Bye Trees

This past Spring, while looking out my kitchen window when at the sink, I've been noticing that there were more dead branches on the closest oak.  I decided to investigate and walked down to scope out the trunk, I discovered that the bottom part of the trunk was rotting and had fungus growing on it.  It is bad having mushrooms growing at the base of an oak tree I figured ON the tree was really bad.  

We had gotten the name of a good tree pro from my cousin, they had work done at their place, because I wanted the ponderosa pines on the hill checked out, so we called and Fred came out for a look see.  

The oaks I was worried about were trouble and they were leaning over our power lines and propane tank.  It was anyone's guess when they would break and fall, we weren't going to find out.  We decided to have the gray pines along our drive removed too, they were growing really fast, are a nuisance (we were always having to trim off branches for the cars) and they tend to fall over.

We were surprised that they put the
trunks in too!

Friday, bright and early the crew showed up with the bucket truck and the chipper, no mess for us to deal with.  They made quick work of the two black oaks, three medium sized gray pines, a couple baby pines and took out dead stuff hanging over our driveway.  They were considerate and efficient and two and a half hours later they drove off, job done.

Going,

Taking those oaks out left a blue oak that was previously hidden, front and center and we can see the huge live oak unhindered from the house.  The cool green and shade on the hillside will be missed, but it had to be done.

Going....

Gone!

Dead stuff next.

Before picture.

Winching the big pieces to the chipper.

Raking all the leaves and twigs before dropping the trunks.

All gone.

For sale!  Heavy, green oak rounds!

We decided these two grays had to go also.

The End

More Reptilian Adventures

An interesting week here with nature.  Most all of our trees except for one maple tree have leafed out.  The roses are beginning to bloom, we walk around daily and ooh and aah over the buds as they swell and show their colors and just today a few bushes have one bloom open.  The climber on our little bench arbor is busting out.  The new roses are all leafing out nicely.  There is color everywhere.

While sitting in the garden having breakfast yesterday we noticed a different sound and realized it was BIG buzzing and up the hill was a very large swarm of honey bees, what a sound.  They kept on to wherever bees go.

All is great here.  I tell the rest of the story with the pictures.

Poison oak is THICK along a couple of places of the trails
across the highway that we hike, this is just a small patch.
 We can't do anything about it
of course, but we could here at home.  I noticed a big one growing up
out of one of the toyon shrubs I see from the kitchen window.
Larry very carefully cut it out and will work on terminating it.

We took a walk and it was beautiful...I took the short route and lollygagged
taking pictures.  Larry kept on and did his usual long hike.

Gracie flushed this little lizard but it didn't move much
and I was able to catch it and after picking it up I noticed
weird bulges on its neck.  EW!  Small ticks!

I never knew ticks attached to reptiles, I pulled the ticks
from the lizard.  

I hope it felt better.

Our new 10x12 Coleman screen room.  It is
in the shade of trees and will be nice this summer.
We just hope the deer don't damage it, nasty creatures.

Soaking up the sun.

Smells YUMMY!

Adding in some annuals to the new rose bed.

The clematis is quickly covering itself in burgundy blooms.
Dutch iris in the foreground.

Almost four years here and it never occurred to me that snakes
were slithering around after dark.  Gracie while sniffing about,  jumped and acted weird
on one of our potty trips to the garden.  The floodlights are on
but there are a lot of shadows, and I never take the flashlight.

I went back inside to get the light and there was a snake, almost a foot long,
very skinny, a garden snake.  I didn't have my phone, so I went back out
again to get the snakes picture and discovered it had a friend.  They
are friends of the garden, but now I have to worry about rattlesnakes after
dark.  Call me silly but I thought they went to bed when the sun went down.
Larry found it in the water valve box today...he hates snakes, but he
was nice to it.