The “Poly” in Cal Poly is for “Polytechnic”, as in there are multiple schools within “California Polytechnic State University” at San Luis Obispo. There were seven school when I was there between 1985 and 1990. I was a student of the “School of Agriculture”. “Horticulture” was my “Major”, or major realm of study within this school. Within this major, I selected “Floriculture and Nursery Production” as my “Concentration” of study. That certainly is a lot of quotation marks.

While majoring in horticulture at Cal Poly, I studied with students whose concentrations of study were within “Landscaping” or “Floral Design”. Withing the School of Agriculture, we studied with students who majored in “Crop Science” or “Animal Science” and so on. Like horticulture, each of those other majors was divided into other concentrations.

Then there were all those students of the other six schools, which I will not even get into because…

Like something from an old fashioned science fiction movie, this anomaly appeared in a roadway overnight. There are several more in other roadways and elsewhere about town. They are quite wet. In fact, they are composed almost completely of water. What is even weirder is that the water that they are composed of actually fell mysteriously from the sky overnight as many countless droplets all over town! Many of these droplets migrated into low spots such as this one to form what we now see in this picture.

People in other climates where these mysterious droplets are not so rare might be familiar with this sort of phenomenon. The droplets of water are known as ‘rain’. They precipitate out of the atmosphere as it cools and can not contain as much water vapor as it did when it was warmer. As the droplets migrate into low spots in roadways and…

I do not know where they went. There are plenty that are not worth getting pictures of, but the pretty and colorful ones that I wanted to show off in the ‘Six on Saturday’ post are gone. I suppose that they are still out there. They just are not as pretty and colorful as they were earlier.

Pistache leaves deteriorate quickly. They were very colorful while still in the trees, but were not much to look at by the time they were on the ground.

Ginkgo colored well too, but after I got that one picture of the single leaf, I could find no others. The tree that sent that leaf is not in the neighborhood. ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/?s=birthday )

I suppose that I could have gotten a good picture of a colorful sweetgum leaf. I just did not bother with them. Nor did I bother with flowering pear.

California sycamore…

They have been a part of life in Southern California longer than anyone can remember. The Santa Ana Winds have been blowing down from the high deserts to coastal plains long before people arrived in the region. They are arid and usually warm before they leave the Great Basin and Mojave Desert, and they get even warmer as the flow downhill through mountain passes. That is what makes them so dangerous during fire season. Wind alone accelerates wildfire. Warming arid wind desiccates fuel, making it more combustible before wildfire arrives.

Santa Ana Winds are so regular that they affect how tall trees grow within the regions of the mountain passes where Santa Ana Winds move the fastest. Tall Mexican fan palms that grew up straight where sheltered from wind near the ground innately lean with the prevailing wind as they grow up and become more exposed. Those closer to the…

What is killing the box elders? (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/what-is-killing-the-box-elders/) I still do not know. I know that does not sound like much of an update. All I can share is some pictures of secondary symptoms observed now that the affected trees are deteriorating.

The two pictures above, although not relevant to any symptoms, are important to our Community because the historic Felton Covered Bridge just got a new roof! (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/felton-covered-bridge/) Dead box elders that are already starting to destabilize and collapse are now leaning onto the edge of the new shingles! They really need to be removed before winter storms move them around, and they dislodge any shingles.

The first of the two pictures below show basidiocarps associated with fungal decay of the trunks and roots. This decay destabilized and compromised the structural integrity of the necrotic trees with remarkably efficiency. The trees died only last spring, and…

Just because it ‘can’ be grown as a houseplant does not meant that it ‘should’ be. That is a lesson that Brent and I never learned in college. He and I were roommates in the dorms at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, which, as you can imagine, was a problem. Our room on the top floor of Fremont Hall was known as the Jungle Room. It was so stuffed full of weird houseplants, as well as a few plants that had no business inside. We had a blue gum eucalyptus bent up against the ceiling, an espaliered Southern magnolia, a Monterey cypress, and a herd of camellias that we rescued from a compost pile on campus.

After college, our own homes were no better. Because my dining room was rather small, Brent gave me tall weeping figs that had unobtrusively bare trunks down low, and plenty of fluffy foliage…

December 13 is the birthday of our dearly departed friend Steven Ralls. His ‘Steven Michael Ralls Memorial Tree‘ that was planted on May 2, for the third anniversary of his passing, is doing well, and likely appreciates what transpired overnight. Now that it got the opportunity to disperse roots through its first season in the ground, it will receive no more supplemental irrigation.

Such irrigation will no longer be necessary. The tree is a native Monterey cypress, which survives on annual rainfall, within a locally limited season. It was only occasionally irrigated through its first season, while it was busy dispersing roots. It should do well without any such intervention next year. Now that the rainy season started, the soil will not get dry until late next spring.

Yes, it is now the beginning of the rainy season here. The second…

This single yellow ginkgo leaf says a lot. It was found among the abundant cottonwood leaves on the broad walkway in Felton Covered Bridge Park (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/felton-covered-bridge/). There are no ginkgo trees in the neighborhood that I am aware of. It must have come a long way to arrive here on the morning of December 13.

It really did not need to go through all the effort to get here. I need no help to remember the date. It is the birthday of a good friend who passed away last May.

Steven Michael Ralls is one of two friends I went to Oklahoma with late in 2012 (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/oklahoma/). In the picture attached to my article about going to Oklahoma, there is a handsome gentleman to the left. That is me. The bronze guy in the middle was just standin’ on the corner in Winslow, Arizona. Steven is…

Not just any poppies; California poppies, the state flower of California.

So why the picture of an old cinder block wall on the edge of an unkempt and weathered parking lot behind the old County Bank Building? Well, right there in the middle of the picture, where the lowest course of block meets the edge of the pavement are a few weeds, and some of these weeds are poppies showing how resilient they can be.

California poppies are opportunistic. They grow fast and bloom when they can. For most, that means that they bloom as the weather starts to warm up at the end of winter. For others in irrigated gardens, they can bloom in phases through summer. Some do their thing quickly as soon as they get a bit of moisture from the first autumn rains or even dew. They know what time of year it is, and that…

Newer developments are often named after what was destroyed to procure space for them. Writers and historians have been making that observation for decades.

There are obviously no remnants of a ranch in the McCarthy Ranch Marketplace in Milpitas. Heck, there are no little cornfields left in Milpitas, which is what ‘Milpitas’ means. Cherry Orchard Shopping Center in Sunnyvale? Give me a break! The Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell is no better.

I just happen to find the Pruneyard to be less objectionable than the others because it was built about the time I was born. It has been there as long as I can remember. My parents can remember when it was a drying yard for the prunes harvested in the surrounding orchards. I remember the last remnants of prune orchards, but by my time, there were not enough of them to justify the less lucrative use of real…