Not sure where Nasturtium Zero first bloomed but now, if there's a stream or a creek or a pond, chances are these jewel-like faces will be looking up at you.

The southern California coast has begun to reclaim its true hue...

April 2:

April 24:

There's the Labradoodle, the Goldendoodle and (I wish I was making this up) the Cockerdoodle, but here we have the honor of living with a wackadoodle.

Catching up from a few days ago, when the fog kept us cool and atmospheric.

A friend sent me this photo she took yesterday as a mountain lion strolled through her community in the Santa Monica mountains. She said that just moments before, the LA County Sheriffs had been driving along Mulholland Highway, using a bullhorn to warn residents that the big cat was nearby. Not sure whether you can tell -- it's a cell phone shot from a distance -- but the mountain lion's wearing a geocollar, so its every movement was being tracked.

It's been nearly three years since the last remodel and I confess I'm beyond antsy. As I wait (and wait and wait) for the next project, looking back at the last one will have to do.

Ranunculus -- an ugly word for a pretty flower. Wikipedia says it's 'late Latin' for 'little frog'. Whatever, it takes my mind straight to carbuncle, which sounds just like how it looks.

Beautiful ranunculus, you deserve better.

I generally expect to find the worst news of each day in the National sections of our valiant newspapers as Constitutional norms creak and strain under the non-stop assault from the junta in the White House, abetted by a near-dormant Congress that refuses to check or balance the escalating abuses.

How naive.

This difficult story by Louis Sahagun in the LA Times about the swift and perhaps irreversible demise of the urban canopies of Southern California breaks your heart from an entirely new direction.

The trees that shade, cool and feed people from Ventura County to the Mexican border are dying so fast that within a few years it's possible the region will look, feel, sound and smell much less pleasant than it does now.

"We're witnessing a transition to a post-oasis landscape in Southern California," says Greg McPherson, a supervisory research forester with the U.S. Forest Service who has been studying what he and others call an unprecedented die-off of the trees greening Southern California's parks, campuses and yards.

Skip...

Among the hardest-hit native species of urban trees are California sycamores, typically found along streams and commonly used as shade and street trees in places such as Griffith Park and along downtown's Wilshire Boulevard.

"Here's the sad news about sycamores," said Akif Eskalen, a plant pathologist at the University of California, Riverside. "If we cannot control the shot hole borer, it will kill all the sycamores in California. And when they're done with sycamores, they'll move to other trees."

Fair warning -- video on the page is annoyingly on auto-play.

It's just so beautiful right now.

Let's soothe that spikey sugar hangover with some infinite blue.

A little Easter egg hunt in the courtyard here...

And Walter joins Team Bunny.

Not a skeptic in sight. (And no, Walt didn't get any candy.)

There's always something to see in the U-turn lane across from Trancas.

The other day the fog came in thick enough to squeeze out a few raindrops so of course your drought-battered blogger had to get the photo.

The 'coming soon' signs went up seven years ago. It'll be interesting to see what does finally get built in what remains open space.

Throwback Thursday: Taken on April 5, 2007

Driving down Mulholland the other day when the clump of twigs near the top of a tree had an unexpected addition -- a feathered head.

So we stopped, camera out, zoomed in, and yes, a nesting hawk.

They're calling it a pink moon but around here it was the usual yellowy gold. My favorite part was that just as the shutter clicked, a crow flew through the frame.

The California coast -- all you have to do is point and shoot.

The thing about being somewhere at about the same time almost every day is that you get to learn who else is a regular. Lately it's been this heron, who flies in from the south, wings slowly flapping, legs reaching, running to a surprisingly graceful landing.

Usually he stands utterly still for the entire 30 minutes or so that it takes Walter to run himself to exhaustion chasing the ball. But yesterday, he took a tiny walk.

Sorry the video is so jittery but I had the little point-and-shoot at maximum zoom with no tripod so that's as still a shot as I was able to manage.

This was three years ago in December. I remember that a storm had blown in seemingly out of nowhere, low clouds, high winds, fast and ragged rain. We were driving along in a heavy mist when all of a sudden it kind of shredded, opened up and there they were, blue sky and lone oak.

I guess I'll keep on saying it until it stops being true but I'm not sure I've ever seen the hillsides around here so lush and green.

Bluffs Park this morning, where a dozen different kinds of wildflowers are having their own modest super-bloom.