My niece, April, is visiting for a couple of days, and we took her for a hike up the beautiful creek trail. Rain was threatening, but it didn't look serious. The sun was hiding behind a grey sky, peeking out from time to time.

This trail is really spectacular. Everytime we go up it, I am more and more in love with it. The ferns are coming up big now, and the creek is full and singing loudly with spring fever. There is one spot where you can actually see seven little waterfalls stair-stepping down the hill.



Well, by the time we got on the trail, it had started to sprinkle, but we persevered because most of the time we were under the trees, and well, it's just so pretty. By the time we got up to the redwood glen, it was raining pretty hard, and all the way back, we just got wetter and wetter! We were three drowned rats and a dog by the time we got home. But it was fun, sort of adventure-like, to just submit to the rain.

We drove through the storm later on, to go to Dan's Oscar party. Great fun and celebrity-dishing and sparring over the tivo remote was had by all.

Lately this blog has become very photogenic, heavy on the images and light on the words. I wonder if this transition is due to the emergence of color into the environment. Vibrantly green hills, glowing daffodils, the front yard's magnolia tree, and now the hot and soft pinkatude of the cherry and plum trees.. all of these colors, and more, are daily vacations for my winter-weary eyes.

People talk a lot about their favorite colors - and of course, I have a stated favorite. But what I really enjoy is a bright color. Any color that jumps from the scene, shouting out its name from a distance, is what I like. I may not like the bubble gum pink of .. well, say bubble gum as it's being blown out of pink mouth. But if I see something equally pink - a pink poodle against a black skirt or a pink balloon in the blue sky, it suddenly POPS, and it's good.

Maybe that's why I love purple (my favorite). You just don't see that much purple, so when it appears, it's the odd man out. I don't wear much purple - perhaps because I can't really see it in context when it's on my body. I do love having purple toenail polish, down there where I can see that wild color, and enjoy.

Photo Friday's theme is "rural". We stopped to view Confusion Hill and the mighty chipalope when up in rural northern California last summer.

I wish we could have made it to New York City this year, to see and walk through Christo's The Gates. I have been enjoying all the online photos of this event. Here's one of my favorites, or at least a portion of it, where the glory of the color of the gates is matched by the fabulously long shadows of the trees.



The NY gates remind me of the beautiful torii gates in the shrines of Japan. There is something so powerful about that saffron color.

Yesterday we went to hear Tuck and Patti sing in Oakland. If you have never heard them, check out their website and buy an album. It will do your heart good. Their songs make me feel like I am connected, by a thread of love, to everyone in the world. Patti sings with this incredible relaxed form of energy, that makes her voice radiate with power. Tuck's amazing guitar playing flows along with her, in perfect synch even with her scat singing and improvisations.

Patti went to school with Laura, the bass of L'Attitude, so we got to go backstage and meet them after the show! What fun. I have been enjoying their music since the early 80s, and it was my first opportunity to tell them face-to-face how much I appreciate it.

I wonder whatever happened to the singer "Luscious Jackson". Always loved that name.

We took our new trail, temporarily named "Oxford Trail", all the way up the mountain on Saturday. It is an exquisite walk! The creek was slightly less full, after a few days of sunshine, but the leaves and ferns and wild flowers were further along in their rebirthing process.







We went up through the bay laurel forest into a magical redwood glen. The big trees were probably logged 30 (or more) years ago, judging from the size of the trees there now. They grow grouped in big circles around the phantom trunk, which has long disintegrated. We stood inside those circles of trees, gazing up into the branches. The smells and sounds of a redwood glen are a hallmarks of a distinctive California experience. The trail becomes so soft underfoot, and the sweet musty air is filled with dusty motes.



Up at the top of the trail, where it seems to deadend, there is a rope swing tied to a madrone tree, tempting brave hikers to hop aboard and swing out into the redwood glen, hollering at the top of their lungs. This time, we didn't take the challenge, not wanting to fill the area with our noise or the blood incurred from any consequental injuries. There was a mushroom mural painted on the tree next to the swing, and on the hike back down, I found the real thing.

This is one genetic distortion, if you ask me. For Photo Friday's theme of "distorted".

It's funny how the earth seems to know when the calendar month has turn. Just this week, the sun started coming up earlier, temperatures rose, and wild flowers sent up their preparatory foliage. This morning, our magnolia tree was pure potential, with the tips of the hot pink buds glowing through the fog. Near the shopping center's sign, a cluster of daffodils in full bloom brightened the smoggy corner. Just now, I flung open the window of my office and I can hear the froggy calls of amphibians down along the pond's edge.

We found a brand new hiking trail yesterday morning. It wanders up the mountain along a beautiful, big creek that exists only on the hill.. by the time it reaches our street, it has been re-routed underground. And the neighbors wonder why their yards sometimes flood! The creek has a wonderful rocky bed, and the spring run-off sometimes pours over them smoothly, and other times tumbles with that glorious watery sound. Babbling brook? a funny term. To me the sound is like a well-tuned instrument, a wild percussion of tones, like vibes or a xylophone. The path will be wonderful all year round, because it stays well underneath a lovely forest of bay laurel. This ensures that there will be shade there in a few short months, when the earth has turned again.

Barb wanted to join the gym again this year, but I talked her into a simpler, cheaper plan: switching our morning walk to the dog park into walking up the mountain across the street. OK, well, it's not a huge mountain, but it is called Mt. San Pedro, and the street goes up at quite an angle. So we have been dutifully hiking up nearly every day, and enjoying it quite a bit. We found some great new trails, some private roads to trespass on, and some very big houses with lovely vistas. One morning we crashed through a brambley trail into the back retaining wall of a super-home being built nearby. We balanced our way on the wall so that we could scramble down to the street, but found that the wall was not built very well! Several bricks dislodged themselves in the effort.

The dog has slimmed down quite nicely due to these walks. Of course, we don't seem to look any thinner. But we feel better. Except for my heel. I seem to have developed tendonitis. The pain was getting quite severe, especially when I woke up in the morning, which makes no sense at all to me. Except perhaps my body is trying to send me the message that it doesn't like getting up at 6:30 and hiking up a mountain, thank you very much.

Yesterday I took some time to read up on heel pain on the web, and found that it's best to cushion the heel and to take it slow. I bought some Dr Scholl's inserts and, believe it or not, they really have made a difference today! I can trot downstairs to the printer and back up again without looking like I am 80 years old.

I just love watching the birds at the feeder. In the winter, they crowd around and jockey for position. They do seem quite polite, at least within their own size group. One will eat a few seeds, and then another will flutter nearby to remind him, "hey buddy, your time is up!". The first will fly off to the nearby bushes and let the second bird take his spot.

Normally we get a flock of robins in January to come and eat every single holly berry from our tree. I'm hoping it's the unusually cold weather that we had this year that has delayed them.. not some robin-related environmental disaster. Due to the robin's absence, the sparrows have taken up residence in the holly tree and fly in and out en masse.

Just this week, the woodpeckers have returned. Their rat-a-tat-tat during our morning walk is a pleasant sound. Yesterday, I saw a hummingbird hopefully buzzing around the rosemary bush. The sunny weather has finally emerged from a month of low fog, and we saw white wild flowers pop up along the mountain trail. The rest of our birds' return can not be far away.