Visit the kelpforest....

I thought we were having some kind of bug invasion, but there must be some sort of training course for pest control technicians here today. There are about sixteen bright yellow trucks from Western Exterminators (all with their company logo, a guy in spats, sunglasses and a top hat, with a mallet behind his back mounted on the back end), a good six from Orkin, and a couple of other termite control companies in the parking lot.



ETA: Turns out it was a trapping permit test. One of the admin staff told me some of them have taken it about 6 times - but apparently it's fairly difficult.

So, midsummertime. Angus's last day of summer school was yesterday, to his great relief. "Who invented summer school, to torture kids!" he said the day after regular school got out, and shook his first. The days of taking summer school for fun things is gone forever, I guess. His report card came back as everything "progressing towards goals." I think he's excited to go to Dwyer this fall; certainly he was disappointed that summer school didn't take place there.

I don't think we're going to be able to go camping this summer like we did last year; gas isn't so expensive, but with more than a month's salary gone...I don't think we'd better. John's been looking for something, but he just met yesterday morning with one of his old bosses, who told him Ralph's/Food 4 Less will be going through another round of layoffs, so not very likely there. He would love to go back to cooking, but we don't think his health could stand it, since his asthma seems to keep getting progressively worse. We are probably going to have to take out a loan to get tutoring for Avalon and cover a few bills we are short on.

Outside my office window, tiger swallowtails chase each other through the sycamores surrounding the building. They seem to be pretty aggressive for butterflies. I've been wondering why they seem to be attracted to these trees when I had thought that swallowtail caterpillars liked dill and fennel. Well, I should've searched earlier - it's Black Swallowtails that like those plants. These are Western Tigers (maybe explains the aggression, too, heh), and they do prefer trees.

On a walk after work...seen chewing up the neighborhood telephone poles...

Carpenter bees
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
20 April 2009

( Down the alley... )

I'm mystified as to why my local Tar-jhay sells these - anyone who expects to get any fireflies is going to be disappointed. We don't have them around here; it's too dry. Wish we did. Here in southern California, our main experience with fireflies is in the Pirates of the Carribean ride at Dismalland - tiny lights on the end of a wire, being blown around by a fan.


Target
Seal Beach CA
Casio EX-Z80A
28 February 2009

So hot today - we had the kiddie pool in the front yard all day, and I sat out there and read while the kids splashed around. Although I was feeling a bit guilty about all the water use; damn I hadn't realized that thing holds nearly 700 gallons. I did use it to water the planters after.

Tidal Wave!
Front yard
Huntington Beach CA
Sharp VE-CG30
17 May 2008

( Beetle jaws... )

(crossposted to urban_nature)

We saw tons of mourningcloak (Nymphalis antiopa) caterpillars this summer. I haven't seen this many for years. When I was a kid, they used to colonize the few elm trees on my street, but the city began spraying the trees for pests, and they became a lot rarer. Lots of people don't like the caterpillars because they are spiky and scary looking, and leave lots of droppings beneath whatever tree they are feeding on. This website has some nice background infomation on them, and it's even from my county! :)

http://www.dbc.uci.edu/~pjbryant/biodiv/lepidopt/nymph/mcloak.htm

We noticed this small tree in June. I'm not sure; I think its a type of Australian willow. I walk past it from the bus stop to my house. There were so many caterpillars, they completely stripped it of leaves three times over the summer. I never noticed so many on any other tree on my street, even though there are others of the same type only a few houses away. The third time caterpillars appeared on the tree, they got about half grown and then one day I came home from work to find that the property owners had ripped the entire tree out of the ground.



( more stages... )

I'm such a dork. I find out a restaurant I've eaten at has a website and I have to check it out. This is where I ate last night

Sango Sushi (ooh, they even have recipes and there's another one near where I work - I'll have to look for it)

John got the three taco combo from Baja Fresh next door, and we sat outside and ate. By ourselves. Avalon was asleep early, and the boys spent the night with Grandma. Before getting food, we walked around Staples for a few minutes and drooled over stuff we can't afford. Afterward, we got a BBQed pork sandwich for my dad at Oggie's and walked home. We even held hands. I'm sure that's been part of our problem lately, not enough just us time.

Then we got home, he went out in the garage until after midnight, and I fell asleep too soon. Wolf's Rain is getting depressing.

Avalon got a bee sting today. My neighbor has a low hedge of heather that the insects love, and she likes watching them. She must have tried grabbing one; I was pulling weeds in the planter on the opposite side of the yard when I heard a screech and looked up to see her holding her hand and I knew she must have gotten stung. Sure enough, I looked at her thumb and there was the end of worker's abdomen. I dragged her into the bathroom, used my pocketknife to scrape the stinger away and washed her hand. I spaced on what to do after that, so I called the on call nurse through my health insurance. She told me to just put some ice on it and a paste of either baking soda or meat tenderizer, give her some tylenol, and make sure she didn't start wheezing or swelling. Her thumb is puffy, but once she calmed down she seem to be ok, and was back out playing in the yard in about an hour.

Angus is having a relapse of the cold he had last week, and now I finally seem to be getting the sniffles.

John went to Goodwill the other looking for some mattress pads - all of ours are getting shredded - but decided the unused ones they were selling were a little steep for Goodwill. Instead he saw something I might like, and got that for me instead.

A signed photo of James Doohan as Montgomery Scott, probably from one of the movies, for $1.99.

Actually, it's kind of nice to have, given they probably won't be available any more. I was rather sad to hear about his last public appearance the weekend before last.

---

I was talking to Beth on the phone while I was writing this. She always calls me when she's driving somewhere, and as a result I got to hear her delight when she walked in the door of her apartment and found a huge cockroach in the middle of her living room. I was trying to help her work up the courage to sweep it out the door ( I told her it was probably a late casualty of her landlord's spraying last week) , but she unfortunately was unable to bring herself to even touch it with the broom. If I lived closer, I'd have picked it up with a paper towel for her, but she just said she was going to hang and beg her neighbor (a retired cop) to deal with it for her. Heh, just because she was a cop doesn't mean she can deal with cockroaches any better. You should see my big, tough-guy husband with spiders.

She was all freaked out because it was a giant one, and the ones in her bathroom were the little German roaches. Hell, she lives out in the desert - the big ones are part of the wildlife out there. It may have come in from outside.