Tag Archives: bike path

Gleanings from an evening walk.

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When Ivy and Jamie were here they got me back into the habit of an evening walk. Depending on how much time we had before dark, or how much energy remained for Grandma after the day’s events, we might just go to the bridge over the creek and back, ten minutes. Or we might do a half hour’s walk, farther on from there.

Wedged between twigs and the trunk of the live oak above, Ivy found a smooth and flattish oval rock. She brought it home and painted a frog on it, and placed it back where she’d found it. A day later it had been taken, so she next wrote a friendly note to the taker and managed to place it between the twigs. The note had been moved when I looked tonight, and now it’s likely to get blown down. She had leaned out precariously over the bridge to place her items in the first place, where I can’t reach, so I’m of no use in pursuing further written communications with other bridge-walkers.

Since the children went home, I’ve walked every evening by myself. Today dusk was early, because of it being a mostly cloudy day. No frogs were croaking in the creek, and few birds were to be heard. A towhee, the distant cawing of a crow, and few finches by the side of the path.

We’re coming into the season when the wild Himalayan blackberries get ripe, and they grow all along the creek and the path. Actually most of them never ripen, but this evening I found a few sweet and juicy ones  hiding in the back of a patch. One of them is in the photo, just before I plucked it. Dessert!

Along my street the neighbor’s bank of star jasmine is in full bloom, and it is exuding its heavy sweetness — too much for some people, and not a plant you want to have by your front door, because of the bees that will scare your guests. But it’s nice to catch a whiff when walking by.

Star Jasmine

And I passed the home of Deanna, whose door I bravely knocked on a couple of years ago to introduce myself and ask if I might have some of her dozens of summer squashes growing and becoming overgrown right by the sidewalk. She gladly gave me a few (already overgrown ones), but I never asked again. Last week I saw her outside when we were walking by, and she told me to come and pick from the current crop anytime. So tonight I did. I just twisted this little crookneck until it broke off.

These bike paths in my town that follow the course of the creeks typically back up to fenced back yards of neighborhoods on the other side. Growing through those fences are a great variety of not-so-wild plants: roses, trumpet vines, honeysuckle; for years branches of a fig tree hung over the path, from which I picked several figs, before it evidently got pruned back. Tonight I broke off a stem of honeysuckle to stick in my buttonhole, and breathed in its sweetness all the way home.

To the creek and back home.

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Four days in a row I’ve taken a walk along the creek path. During the two or three months previous, while I was working hard in the garden, traveling, or concentrating on other various things, I could not seem to do this most leisurely and beneficial thing for  myself. Well, I’m starting again. Autumn seems to be good for new beginnings, in my case.

The top photo shows you how green and grassy and leafy much of the creekside scenery is, but leaves are turning in a few places, such as on this grapevine coming through the fence from someone’s backyard:

And a few trees with yellow leaves are letting them fall now, too. Some are silver maples, I found that out from my Seek app.

When I get back to my place at the end of these walks, I now have several new plantings to look over as I go up the front walk, like the Swiss chard and other greens, which I’ve gotten smart and planted in the front yard, because that’s where all the sun is:

In the back garden I did get the new manzanita planted, and the succulents replaced around it. I cleaned up the pine needles that had been making a thicker and thicker blanket on the plants in that area, and finished just before dark, when it was not good lighting for a picture. The wind came that night and brought down more pine needles, which I have yet to clean up. So I’ll show you McMinn (my name for the new bush, a “Howard McMinn” subspecies) another time. Here is one of the darling new succulents that I added there. I did pull the needles off of that one.

The weather has been unusually warm even for California. It was 80 degrees yesterday. But rain is coming again and will cool things off. It remains to be seen whether I will venture forth in the rain the way I did last year. Every day’s a new day… Will I find new ways to keep good habits? Maybe, with God’s help.

This walk required two pair of boots.

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mallow

This evening I made it out for a walk, which turned into two walks, because of something new I saw on my usual route. I stopped at the bridge to look down at the seasonal creek that is getting low… and up at all the bushes and trees growing out of it. Every few years the city maintenance crew dredges out these waterways, but right now everything is growing lush and thick.

The willows are the tallest plant that grows down there, and buckeyes are numerous. What was that I saw climbing up in the tallest willow bushes? White flowers… if I only had a better camera, or even binoculars… I pointed my Seek app at the flowers and it said Lady Banks’ Rose. Even as poorly as I could make them out, that didn’t seem right.

The roses were growing in the area in the middle of the creek bed, between two creeks right where they join to become one. I thought I would try to go down closer to the water where there is a jumble of unpaved dry-season paths that some people run on with their dogs, and a few children explore. Also there is a sloping cement driveway of sorts for the maintenance vehicles, that is submerged in the winter. Two paved creekside paths also meet at the bridge. But when I got to the place where I would cross the southern stream to get to that middle area, the rocks were covered with algae, and it all seemed too muddy and messy for me to attempt while wearing my new boots.

So I came home and looked up Lady Banks Roses. They did not at all resemble what I’d seen; I guess they were too distant for Seek to make out. The bright idea occurred to me: Why not change into my old boots that I was thinking of giving away, and go back? Why not, indeed?

lemon balm

When I arrived at the crossing place again I had to squish through the mud and the algae, but with only a few steps I was over, and my old boots were mostly waterproofed and barely noticed.

watercress

My, what a lot of plants in that mid-creek jungle! Once before I walked down there, but it was in September when everything starts drying up. The roses today were growing in the middle of the willows, honeysuckle, horsetail grass, fennel and bedstraw.

Watercress, Greater Plantain, and Bermuda Grass

Many of the plants are naturalized from backyard escapees. The Bermuda grass for sure, and the lemon balm, and the roses. Wild blackberry brambles snagged my clothes and grabbed at my hair, but I managed to feel my way with my feet along the edge of the creek that was hidden by bullrushes, right up close to the flowers I wanted to see better.

When Seek could assess the image better it identified it as Rosa multiflora or Rosa polyantha, a native of eastern Asia. It also told me I’d observed it two years ago near my daughter Pippin’s place in the farther north part of the state. These roses were to me the prettiest thing in all that jungle.

It really made my day to make this little excursion and discover who they were, and to meet as well many of their companions in the creek. I think I’ll hold on to my old boots.

African Blue Basil

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This morning I switched my walking route to the less-frequented, unpaved path by the creek, and I was alone down there. But for a minute I could hear above me on the paved path, behind the trees, a woman talking on her mobile phone. She had it set on speaker, and I could hear both sides of the conversation. The woman near me said, “How is your diet? Are you eating the right things?” and I caught the Woman-on-Speaker saying, “I just can’t eat salad,” after which Woman No. 1 said, “I know people think Special K tastes like cardboard, but I eat a bowl of it every night before bed. It helps me sleep good!” And then they were out of range….

Bristly Oxtongue

That conversation is slightly connected, by being about things we do or do not eat, to the title I almost gave to this post, something about “Bristly Oxtongue” — but it was a little too rough. Now that I think about it, I do see why the plant was given that name, though when I have cooked beef (ox) tongue, I never thought of the bumps as bristly. And the botanical one I saw on the path was in its glory, such as that is, with prolific flowers on a 4-ft high plant. I have identified it in the past, but lately don’t tend to pay attention to the various thistly and bristly plants out there.

Another plant that is not my favorite, and which I wish I could keep far away from my garden, is Bermuda Grass. When I was growing up, the birds brought its seeds to the lawn my father had planted around our new house, and from then on it was a Bermuda Grass lawn, which has a lot to say for it in the dry and hot Central Valley of California. It needed watering less than weekly. It was a scratchy and coarse kind of grass to play on, and in the winter it goes dormant and brown, but it’s very hardy in every way. This plant has been encroaching from my neighbor’s back yard to mine for as long as I’ve lived here, and I am forever fighting its advance.

Today I realized that one reason this stretch of path is surprisingly green, is that it has a healthy crop of Bermuda Grass growing on the sides.

I saw quite a few other plants along the way. Curly dock reminds me of the rural bus stop of my childhood, where that plant was always growing.

Back in the home garden, my cultivated species are filling my cup of contentment. I have strawflowers for the first time, which the skippers love. If I didn’t have the ability to put a big digital photo here, I wouldn’t be able to see the long but miniature tongue the skipper is dipping down into that flower. Drink up, little skipper! Be my guest!

African Blue Basil

The plant you have been waiting for is the African Blue Basil — at least, that’s what the tag on the little pot said, that I brought home from the nursery. I just read about it online, and it says that the leaves are purple when they first sprout, and mine aren’t… It also is supposedly a perennial, which would be nice. It’s magnificent, and I saw two species of honeybees among the dozen or more were working it. It’s the latest dish that the pollinators are tasting on the smorgasbord in the Glad Garden.