wildflower

datura spiral

teodora cuero

ethnobotany calendar project

3:50 am. up early in anticipation of beginning the 91 day, 13 week ethnobotanical calendar project. field notes. photos. journal entries. notebook. diary. notes. sketches. scans. seeds . . . 6:35 am. out to photograph elderberry flowers in the rainbow back country. i want to photograph the elderberry in first light. but the wind is not my friend this morning. the wind is fickle. first there appears to be none, then blows, then calm again. when i arrive at my tree, the wind is indeed blowing. i had picked out this tree as a drive-by about a week ago, so i'm surprised when i get out of the car at all the stickery crud, aka weeds, i have to walk through to get close to the tree. the kind of stickery crud that gets in your socks, permanently. also, there's abandoned car parts everywhere—looks like a door, maybe a hood, but they're half buried beneath all the stickery crud. back country is anything but pristine in san diego county. marian walkingstick, an acjachemen elder, calls elderberry "a musical tree." she makes her clappersticks out of elderberry after harvesting straight shoots, usually from a tree that has been pruned the year before. willie pink, pechanga ethnobotanist, says there are more uses for elderberry than any other southern california native plant.

scarlet bugler

Scarlet bugler on the Pechanga Reservation. Went to photograph at 7 a.m. with Rose Ramirez and Joe Moreno.

milkweed flower

yerba santa

chia: Salvia columbariae

native vine

shooting star

wild onion

indian lettuce

chocolate lily

peony heaven

the alarm rings at 5:20. i get up, dress, pack my camera in the car, and head out to pauma valley to meet rose at the coffee shop on the 76. we had agreed to meet at 6:15. we were anxious to arrive at peony heaven, on the 78 east of ramona, before the sun rose. we had been to the site four days earlier, but the winds were too strong to photograph, and the sun was already to high in the sky, washing out all the details we hoped to capture in this most elusive of blooms. the peony flower is small, secretive, nodding. To photograph the flower, it's necessary to get down on the ground, to prostrate yourself before it. The tripod has to be prostrate as well, with the center post removed and the tripod legs completely flattened. the area we call peony heaven burned in the witch fires in october, 2007. now the peonies are prolific, more so than i've ever seen before. in one area, the wild cucumber is climbing over the peonies, but for the most part, the plants are colonizing the area by themselves. rose and i brought towels to lay down upon, because the ground is full of ash. after awhile, i forget the towel, so i'm laying directly on the ashen soil. i tell rose later how much i enjoy this. i feel as if i'm 6 again, playing in the dirt.

the peony makes us work for the photos. this is no crayola orange poppy flaunting its saturated color, or parry's phacelia blinding our eyes with its intensely deep blues. The wine colored petals of the peony curve inward, protecting and hiding the large pistels and stamens from the casual gaze of a biped. the lizard position is necessary . . .

poppies

"Humans are creatures in search of exultation," Ellen Meloy writes. Exultation = the Lake Elsinore poppy fields. Saturday. Cold. Misty rain. Windy . . . Less than ideal conditions to photograph fields of Eschscholzia californica. Fields of glorious unopened poppies. Poppies that at 6:15 am don't put us to sleep but whose neon orange jolts us wide awake. Rose, Joe and I are in search of exultation in the form of wildflowers, masses of them. Yesterday, on a reconnaissance mission, we had found canterbury bells (Phacelia campanularia) off the I-15 on Main Street exit, yellow fiddlenecks and canterbury bells on the Nichols exit, and poppies, thousands of poppies, on Lake Street. Today, we're positioned to photograph as the sun comes up over the mountains in the east. Full sun had been predicted, but it's inordinately cloudy, Through my macro lens, I photograph the dew as it clings to the poppies. The hour of the wolf is the time before sunrise when bird song stimulates plants to drink morning dew. The hour of the wolf is also the time when we should be sipping our lattes (this is southern California). We're wet and cold, but we photograph the poppies for over an hour.
I'm smitten by one blue dicks, aka wild hyacinth, growing in the midst of the poppies. We discuss the next time we'll come back, when the conditions will be ideal. For wildflower addicts, there's always a next time, another exultation.

On the west side of the I-15, we find El Comal, a small Salvadoran restaurant with pupusas stuffed with cheese and squash and beans. I tell Rose and Joe how I travelled to El Salvador 24 years ago in 1984 to attend a conference sponsored by Co-Madres, Mothers of the Disappeared. The desaparecidos were labor leaders, peasant organizers, student demonstrators, human rights activists, anyone with a progressive agenda who defied the U.S. trained military/paramilitary and the U.S. supported government in power. Anyone who defied our sphere of influence, our vital interests, our investment climate, our national security . . . Humans are creatures in search of human rights, social justice, life without death squads or state-sanctioned torture.

In search of a life with pupusas and wildflower fields, morning dew and exultation.

cleveland sage

monkeyflower

mugwort: Baccharis salicifolia

sugarbush

manzanita flowers pink

hummingbird sage

ceanothus rainbow

The ceanothus is exploding on the hillsides. The chaparral is beginning to take on a blue-violet hue. The wild lilac is one of my favorite native plants—California poppies and orange flowers of the flannelbush against the wild lilac = Giverney in North County San Diego.

datura seedpod

ladybugs on deergrass

redbud seedpods

manzanita flowers

redbud seedpods

manzanita apples

baskets: abe sanchez

hummingbird manzanita

coletta cole: juncus

juncus textilis

coletta cole: acjachemen

juncus and deergrass

basketweaver diania caudell asked me to send some photos to jennifer kalt from CIBA, the California Indian Basketweavers Association, for their brochure that promotes policies to allow native folks to gather without permits on lands managed by the BLM and U.S. Forest Service. The brochure also protects access by tribal gatherers to culturally significant plants. The above photo is diania gathering deergrass on palomar mountain.

minnie tafoya, acjachemen, gathering juncus in deluz canyon

mulefat: Baccharis salicifolia

on february 18, we will be going to the rincon reservation to see the burn areas and to talk with tishmall turner, CSUSM tribal liaison, and kristie orosco, rincon's environmental person, about native habitat restoration. in the riparian area behind the tribal hall where we will first meet, i noticed mulefat growing everywhere. mulefat is a deceptively beautiful plant, but you have to look at it closely. i look at things closely with a close-up lens to enhance my vision. mulefat generally grows in wet or dry streambeds in chaparral or coastal sage scrub.mulefat has colonized the rock wall in front of my house, so it obviously doesn't need a lot of soil or water to grow. mulefat looks a lot like willow, and that's what salicifolia refers to: willow-leaved. i read online how easy it is to propagate mulefat from cuttings, so i'm going to try this from the plants growing along the creek near my house . . .
http://www.canyonscampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/restoring_san_diego_practical_tips.pdf

monserate preserve / RISK

rosie and i met at the monserate preserve to photograph the plant resurrection after the october fires. monserate preserve is across from the pala mesa golf course east of fallbrook and I-15. a great place to hike a 5 mile loop steep trail. but at 6:21 am, i was only interested in photographing the wild cucumber twining over the blackened rocks and branches. wild cucumber is everywhere this year. fire + rain seems to be a magical combination for this plant. later, we'll collect the seeds to make necklaces. we also photographed some of the new growth we know are wildflowers—the blue dicks/wild hyacinth, and other plants i'lll have to return to identify once they flower.

after our hands were too cold to photograph any longer, we headed down the 76 to bonsall. i wanted to show rosie and joe morteros along the san luis rey river. the river is infested with arundo donax, and invasive non-native that soon will be undergoing further eradication. we noted the donax, and noticed the paintballers who use the bridge as a target. the graffiti artists materials were strewn here and there as well, but their mural is impressive. RISK. probably in more ways than i can imagine.

indian rock native garden

cold. it's really cold. i email everyone, tell them coat, scarf, hat, gloves. it's southern california, so it's necessary to suggest to students what to wear on a fieldtrip when it's unusually cold. but clear too. beautifully clear following the beautiful and necessary rains . . .
we meet at indian rock. stare at the latest blue graffiti desecrating the rock. the entire front surface of the rock is defaced, the bright blue lines crossing over the diamond designs painted by a young girl hundreds of years ago during her coming of age ceremony. the bright blue lines belie the heartbreaking fact that they cover something the taggers don't understand. if they did, they might understand the necessity not to destroy the pictographs. serious graffiti artists know how little their own work is respected . . .