Swimming Through the Cave September 14, 2014

While I have been swimming the mile at the La Jolla Cove most of my life, I had never swum through the Caves until this year. Several caves open up under the cliffs, and one is wide enough to swim through. We were surrounded by sea lions who had pulled themselves up on the rocks, including this mother and pup. The current was strong — and a little scary — but it was an exciting adventure. With water so warm this year — over 70 degrees — we can stay in the water for a long time. What we see in the water changes every day — today I saw an odd jelly fish with a blue rudder on top and, of course, sea lions everywhere.

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Bugs in the Garden

It is school garden season again, and this year I am teachinggardening to grades K – 5. We’ve been busy cleaning up, and have found lots of very wonderful bugs in the process. Fig Beetles dig in the dirt of lay their eggs — and so I find their babies, grubs, in the garden beds. Harlequin bugs, a little bug I haven’t identified yet, and cabbage butterflies,  are among our latest many-legged friends to visit the garden.

This was a record year for weeds in the Explorer Garden! A whole crop of amazing parent, staff and community volunteers helped get it ready to use again.

This year’s garden plan will include a garden remodel, courtesy of a team of 9th graders from High Tech High, and our Whole Foods Foundation grant. They will raze our garden to the ground, pull out rotting raised beds, and create a garden plan using Sketch Up. We can’t wait for the work to begin — sometime in mid to late October. Meanwhile, we can enjoy the garden as it is!

Tiny Sierra September 2, 2014

Just returned from another beautiful week at Tuolomne Meadows in Yosemite researching my picture book biography of Ansel Adams, to be titled “Antsy Ansel”, which will be published by Christy Ottaviano Books/Henry Holt publishers in 2016. Experimented with the various zoom lenses on my point-and-shoot camera and focused on the smallest, most amazing aspects of nature I could find:

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