Self Isolated in Upland, CA.

 

 

click photo to enlarge		 During what I call Spring Broken of 2020, it was the start of the global pandemic for Covid-19. In CA in the Los Angeles area, we were some of the first in the US to be self isolating. Some of the first things I started doing was painting some of the rooms in the house, working in the garage making signs and other little projects. Then I decided it was time to learn my new camera a little bit better and I focused on the yard. In 2014 we removed our grass and planted a water wise desert landscape. We also installed an underground drip system and a weather based controller. Right now in April it waters about once every 7 days and should it rain, the system automatically goes into a rain delay mode.

click photo to enlarge		 I digress though....so now back to the camera. After shooting Nikon cameras for the last 18 years I knew them pretty good, but I now have a Sony mirror less camera and it is very different. My biggest reason for the change was the size and weight of my Nikon camera body and glass. It had gotten to the point where I often did not carry it because it was too heavy. I was mostly trying to do macro or close-up shots with the Sony and it took two days and some expert advice from my friend Stan to get the bees close up and in a reasonable focus. I am reasonably happy with the quality I got of the close-ups and I will not get into the trap of buying more expensive, higher quality lenses, just to get better shots that I don't really do anything with anyway. Oh, and when I looked back at pictures of our yard from 2014 and how sparse it was when first planted... the results are it looks pretty dang good. We learned what plants were truly water wise and which ones weren't as we lost a lot of plants. I saw these red plants in Las Vegas at Ethy M's candies cactus garden and had to have them. They were hard to find but they are so easy to grow and the bees really love them. The plant is a Calliandra californica (Baja fairy duster), an evergreen, woody shrub which is native to Baja California. It blooms all year long and survives on very little water.

click photo to enlarge