It's frustrating to listen to the weather person on the radio chirping about the fabulous high-pressure system that means we're in for another dry week. No context about drought, about how March is our last chance to catch up on the season's abysmal rainfall, just a mindless jolly word dump about just wait until this weekend when it's also going to be unseasonably warm.

Meanwhile, we've had some beautiful clouds on the horizon.

Sometimes, the moment we step off the main path, the wind picks up. It's this one particular trail where, in just a few feet, the trees close in. They come at your from the sides and from above and the breeze feels like a breath, like the canyon sighing.

It's coming on dusk when we take this walk, sunlight cutting out, shadows coming in, birds making final flights, and the memory of something a friend once said, that Solstice Canyon is a thin place, one of those spots where the veil between worlds has grown threadbare, makes me shiver.

OK, it's always Puppy Wednesday here lately, but walking in on the baby Labrador with her toy basket on her head surely deserves a post of its own.

The marine layer plays hide-and-seek these days, but no longer comes ashore.

...and then there are the reasons that things move slowly.

It turns out that not only does the baby Labrador have slightly manic ears:

She's also a birdwatcher:

We hadn't seen geese at the Legacy Park pond before, and this group seemed particularly majestic.

Rain maybe in the middle of the week. These are clouds from the weekend, which was cold and cloudy and honestly, it felt great.

The wild puppy goes to doggie daycare once a week. (Saint Walt sighs and says thank you.) Yesterday she arrived early enough that this handsome boy was the only other dog there. It took about ten seconds for them to bond and I'm told that the rest of the day looked pretty much like this video. And because Teddy was first in the play yard, she wasn't intimidated as the bigger and older dogs arrived. So that's the plan from now on -- first one in, and if she had her way, last one out.

This beautiful bird let me take his picture in Legacy Park the other day. It's a busy place so seeing a hawk amid so much activity was a surprise. That's one of the trees that the redwing blackbirds use for their early evening conclaves, and I bet the sight of the raptor was a less-than-welcome surprise.

There's always a lot of chatter from the wild parrots, snippets of conversation when they're roosted in a tree, non-stop screeching when the flocks are in flight. So when the birds suddenly grew agitated the other day, using full sentences to communicate, it was time to take a closer look. And sure enough, there in an oak above the one where they were resting, this hawk. Nothing happened, just a staring match that led to more avian yelling until eventually the hawk moved on.

One thing most of the newly fallen trees in Solstice Canyon have in common is fire damage at the trunk, just like this oak. Now it seems important to capture those that remain standing, so if they should fall, they can be remembered. That's the flock of wild parrots calling in the background, btw, warning one another of an intruder we'll see tomorrow.

Our evening walk in Legacy Park took us past the redwing blackbirds just as they all decided to do a bit of feather fluffing. They stopped singing as much when we came along and since I didn't want to disturb them, the video's pretty short. But I could have watched this particular dance as long as it lasted.