Category: trees
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Hackberry Spring
The skies are cloud-free blue and hackberry trees are budding all over in the spring-like weather in Sacramento. Fortunately, the forecast is for a period of rain to start in a few days–we need the winter wetness here in California. The hackberry is used to make cheap furniture and firewood, according to tree experts. I…
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Worn Out Forest
Drought, invasive pests, and high winds are a few of the dynamics that wear out a forest. I took this shot of the woods at Point Lobos in an attempt to capture the stress that trees are under. The light looks unhealthy to me.
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Valley Blossoms…
California’s Central Valley is awash in fruit tree blooms. Now, if it would only rain.
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Crooked
This week I was looking at a crane in the distance while standing in the park that surrounds California’s state capitol building, There it was right in front of me, a very crooked, very tall palm tree. In fact, this may be the only crooked tree in the park which is very well maintained. I…
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Sacramento Sidewalk Shadows
Many of Sacramento’s downtown streets are lined with trees. In summer the trees provide cover from the sun, but with a low midafternoon winter sun, the bare branches and trunks project shadows on the sidewalk. I assume some may say, “so what?” Well, I prefer walking on concrete sidewalks that are crisscrossed with shadows rather…
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The Very Tall Palm Tree
When the wind blows, this extra tall palm tree, located near a busy Sacramento street corner, bends but does not break, thankfully. By my estimate the tree is 150-feet high. Stay limber palm tree.
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Mighty Oaks Need a Start…
We have two small raised planter beds used to grow flowers, tomatoes and dill. The squirrels apparently like them as well. We found four rooted acorns with oak leaves in the beds yesterday. Transplanted them to the front yard where they’ll either become trees in 10 years, or serve as food for gophers, squirrels and…
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Yellow “Snow”
We were walking our dogs in Sacramento when we hit the yellow “snow.” Trees like the ginkgo are the last to lose their yellow leaves here as fall ends and winter begins. People let them stay on the ground longer than other leaves from sycamore, maple, ash and hackberry trees that, in some cases, fell…
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Nature’s Buckshot…
I still have a hard time believing what I saw on a trail in the Sutter Buttes. A dead oak tree was riddled what looked like bullets from a shotgun, but, so I was told, those holes were made and then filled with acorns courtesy of woodpeckers. Maybe it was a practice tree because the…
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