March 2008 Archives

It was dry at 8:00 this morning when I left home. I worked with a personal training client until 10:00 in the gym and then it was raining, so I decided to stick around and work out on my own and see if it would stop raining. This stretched into two hours somehow (clean shrugs, pressing and deadlifting all require rest in between sets, that's how). I got all my scooter gear on, opened the door and it was snowing. But not sticking.

The gym is close to the ship canal, not much above sea level. Getting to our neighborhood takes me down about five miles of streets that stick pretty close to the water, until the last two miles, when I head straight up a long slow incline. The higher we got the more snow was sticking to the grass and a little bit on the street.

The roads were mainly just wet, but my helmet visor was accumulating snow on the outside and fogging on the inside. I had to ride with it half open, which caused the snowflakes to feel like tiny blades at 35 mph. I took some slow side streets and finally made it home.

We've seen the green-backed Anna's hummingbird at our feeder all last summer and all this winter, but this morning I was out there and saw a rufous for the first time. The linked article says their wings make a buzzy sound, which I heard. It was intermittent like a cricket, but it stopped when he sat in the tree above the feeder. The article also says they're territorial and very aggressive, so maybe there's a battle in the offing. This Wikipedia article has some really good pictures.

I completed the "first draft" of my fountain a couple of weeks ago.


I rescued (transplanted) a tall, gangly viburnum 'Dawn' from the top of the back slope where it was hidden by a ceanothus (Calif. lilac) that had grown much faster. I put the viburnum in the other end of this little flowerbed where the fountain is. I need to get a picture of it. It's about eight feet tall and was quite a wrestling match to dig up and carry down to its new spot, but it looks happy there already. It needed staking because it's so tall.

I have tried two trees in this same bed. The first one, a redbud, turned yellow and died. The second one, a Japanese stewartia, struggled (possibly too much sun and not enough water) and now I've moved it to a new spot to see if it can recover with less direct beating sun--or whether it's dead. The viburnum 'Dawn,' though, I've had great luck with. I have four in various good and bad locations, and the only difference water and sun seem to make is in how fast they grow. This is my favorite plant of all time.