Jepson Prairie in Early April

Yesterday I visited Jepson Prairie, a nature preserve owned by the Solano Land Trust, that is only about 15 miles from here. This is the time of year to see the wildflowers in this remnant of native landscape.   The patches of goldfields (Lasthenia species) are spectacular.   View to the southwest.View to the west. But there is more than just goldfields in this gold field.The yellow and white flowers are butter and eggs (Triphysaria erianthum)

The purple flowers here are Downingia species.    Brass buttons (Cotula coronopifolia). I looked this up and its a native of Africa. The other flowers I've listed are CA natives. How about the name of this one? It's a species of Wool Flower, requiring a host support. Another species that grows in my pasture is shown here. (If you like this then google hippos and manatees in Stockton.)

Jepson Prairie is also home to wildlife.

 I rather amazed myself by getting some decent shots of flying birds...maybe not National Geographic quality, but OK for me. These are Canada geese.

I saw these birds walking across the gravel road to get from one part of the lake to the other. I thought that was rather odd......but looked them up and found that "coots have strong legs and can walk and run vigorously. They tend to have short, rounded wings and are weak fliers"This bird is an avocet. I will admit that although I know the Canada goose, I didn't know the other birds. I ran into a docent in the preserve and asked him. Maybe I'll remember these two.

I want to go back before the wildflower season is completely over. There are docent-led walks every weekend through Mother's Day so maybe I'll make one of those.

Bassi Falls

Yesterday it was way too cold and windy at Loon Lake ... ...for us to enjoy snowshoeing for very long so we drove back down......to the trail to Bassi Falls at about 5400' elevation.There wasn't enough snow to snowshoe but there was no wind and the other signs of winter were still there.  At the base of the falls Meryl and Chris showed off their gymnastic skills.Here is a group shot where we're not quite as bundled up as in the previous post. How many people does it take to arrange a dog-only group shot? You can see the result of this in Rusty's blog after he gets his turn at the computer. Once again, Maggie provide entertainment for Ginny because just hiking isn't enough for her.After the trauma of the first stop we made, Ginny had a great time on this hike. We all thought that she would be worn out for the day, but it seems that the long car ride was enough to revive her and she wasn't at all tired last night.