{"id":24622,"date":"2014-06-21T23:08:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T07:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sparselysageandtimely.com\/blog\/?p=24622"},"modified":"2023-12-17T19:50:57","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T03:50:57","slug":"well-would-you-look-at-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/?p=24622","title":{"rendered":"Well, would you look at that?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Thinking is more interesting than knowing<\/strong> but less interesting than looking.” Goethe<\/p>\n

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While in the Seahaven neighborhood of Inverness<\/strong> a week ago, Lynn and I happened to park under one of the everyday world’s oddities. I was once again intrigued by the sawed-off section of a tree limb that years ago had grown around the guy wire to a utility pole.<\/p>\n

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A closeup reveals how thoroughly the cable became embedded in what remains of a long-gone branch of a long-gone tree.<\/p>\n

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Nor is there only one overhead reminder of arboreal history.<\/strong> Further down Drake Way on the other side of the utility pole, another limb had grown around a pole-to-pole cable. The tree may be gone, but this relic of a limb remains.<\/p>\n

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A log in a tree? Now that’s a real widow-maker<\/strong>, I said to myself last week when I spotted it teetering 10 feet off the ground in a crotch of a pine tree. The pine grows at the entrance to neighbors Skip and Ren\u00e9e Shannon’s driveway.<\/p>\n

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However, when I walked around the tree to get a better look, the optical illusion became apparent.<\/p>\n

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A Western gray squirrel soaks up the morning sun<\/strong> beside my birdbath. I see squirrels around Mitchell cabin fairly often, but it’s hard to photograph one. The moment they’re aware I’m around, they dart out of sight. Last week I got lucky. The squirrel didn’t see me.<\/p>\n

There’s always evidence that squirrels are around. They leave the ground underneath my pine trees littered with well-gnawed pine cones and the green tips of limbs. Squirrels like to feed on pine trees’ cambium layer, which is immediately under the bark. The bark that’s softest and easiest to gnaw through is at the narrow ends of growing limbs, resulting in squirrels forever gnawing off the ends.<\/p>\n

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“Well, we brought reinforcements too, <\/strong>so you can warn your king we’re going to keep advancing a pace at a time and over two until none of his knights is left standing.” (Photo by Lynn Axelrod<\/em>)<\/p>\n

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California quail<\/em><\/p>\n

A mother quail marched across the yard a week ago<\/strong> as a dozen chicks ran to keep up. Males and females both have crests. The males’ is black, the females’ brown. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod<\/em>)<\/p>\n

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When a noise in the bushes caused momma to suddenly stop, the nervous chicks collided in a quailing pileup. But there was no danger, and soon all of them were off and running again. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod<\/em>)<\/p>\n

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A purposeful doe and her small fawn hurry past the bedroom window.<\/em><\/p>\n

“We live in an old chaos of the sun<\/strong>,\/ Or old dependency of day and night,\/ Or island solitude, unsponsored, free\/ Of that wide water, inescapable.\/ Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail\/ Whistle about us their spontaneous cries.” \u00a0Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Thinking is more interesting than knowing but less interesting than looking.” Goethe While in the Seahaven neighborhood of Inverness a week ago, Lynn and I happened to park under one of the everyday world’s oddities. I was once again intrigued by the sawed-off section of a tree limb that years ago had grown around the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10],"tags":[422,339,452],"class_list":["post-24622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-west-marin-nature","tag-blacktail-deer","tag-california-quail","tag-western-gray-squirrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24622"}],"version-history":[{"count":60,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40437,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24622\/revisions\/40437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}