Pink street flower

Green wrapped gifts

If you ever needed to keep me distracted, some beautiful Physalis ixocarpa with complete, green calyxes and a basket of Physalis peruviana could both occupy me in study AND result in tasty snacks!

(Aside: These bright indirect light highlights are challenging for my phone in a way I hadn't noticed in other situations, even while having it focus on the brightest areas, there is some blowing out...  The solution would be to get them closer to the light source, so there is less range. It's still funny to see.)

Autumn in tomatoes

It's better than looking for autumn colors in the many wildfires raging in my state.

Lone tomatillo

Physalis ixocarpa, what a beauty you are!

I feel so lucky to have grown up with access to these, especially prepared by others in beloved salsa verde (green sauce).

I received gorgeous tomatillos this week with my produce subscription, carefully wrapped, with the husks fresh and completely intact, and immediately lost my mind wanting to photograph them, because - OF COURSE I DID. You know what I'm like by now. (It's this, a door, a cactus, or a cloud, right?)

I can't find the phone macro lens that I want to use (because it is TINY), or even the phone microscope attachment (less tiny, in a clearly labeled box, SOMEWHERE).

The Wikipedia tomatillo page says that scientists have found tomatillo fossils dating back 52 million years. That is the first thing I learned today. I am trying not to name anything "tomatillo fossil," though there is something satisfying about that combination of words.

Neighborhood flora

The upside of running an errand during a brief window when the air was clean!

Hooray for neighborhood gardeners!

Indoor patterns

You know I love my teleidoscopes.

Dual reflections

Darker and spookier in real life

Indoor sports

So, there's a pandemic on AND a heatwave AND the air is unhealthy for sensitive groups due to wildfire smoke.  Every time I try to get some "fresh" air, I wind up with burning eyes.  So, it's time to catch  up on my photography chores, and that includes doing some Polaroid peel-apart print scanning from my most recent (yet not very recent) outing with my gorgeous Polaroid Land Camera from the early to mid 1960s.

You should be impressed that film that has been in refrigerators since about 2008 still works!  Yes, there are lots of odd edges, spots and areas that just won't develop on some of the prints, but they are kind of charming, in their way.

The only problem with catching up on scanning is that I wonder where other sepia peel-apart prints I made wound up.  I've got some favorites that...  I can't account for.  Where are they now?

Mountains hiding in smoke

The San Francisco Bay Area is still subject to vast plumes of wildfire smoke.  Here's a view north/northwest last night vs. this morning.  (The angle of the sunlight matters a lot.)

Beautiful beets

On the outside, they looked like rather sad turnips, ruddy and red-brown.

On the inside, they are striped and bright and gorgeous.

This time I steamed them for half an hour, and am working through them slowly.

Weekend of acrylic ink joy

Yes, I still love my Montana Markers.  

Yes, I did go out and buy the 15mm wide tipped versions of my two favorites, white and silver.  

Yes, using a wide marker DOES change the way I use the ink and make the differences between negative and positive space ambiguous.

Also, I did some drawings on some interior office windows that people kept trying to walk into, and the ink sticks beautifully to clean, smooth glass.  Yes, my colleagues all came by and touched it (gently), and it held up really well.  Yes, I am afraid I'll buy lots of transparent films and draw on those now - thanks for asking!

San Mateo-Santa Cruz August Lightning Complex smoke

I went out to drop my mail in the mailbox, and looked off to the right to see a WALL of smoke.  So, I took a walk to see how far it has spread.  The answer: far.  So far.

You can see a panorama and some other photos of the smoke from a hilltop in my neighborhood here.

Tender greens and pinks

Some of the old giant eucalyptus have been taken down, and around their stumps are gorgeous sprouts in lovely pastels...  Yes, I took too many photos.  No, my friends don't understand why, as if I'm the only one who things that green-to-red transition is MAGICAL.  (But it is!)

Before blooming

I've never noticed these buds on acacias before...  What's confusing right now is that the acacias around Lake Merced seem to be experiencing every possible season: there is new growth, there are drying up branches missing lots of leaves and covered in seed pods, and there are these.  WHEN ARE WE?

Busy as a bee

She seemed very busy! And big!  (I was going to guess she is a carpenter bee, but I don't know enough about bees to be sure.  I think carpenters have a dot in the middle, and she doesn't?)  

Nearby: very red rose hips, and more blooming climbing roses.

Color scraps

These are little artifacts from my monotype printing projects.  

Monotype printing and acrylic ink drawing have sustained me while my darkroom is packed up.  I still need to figure out how to share or organize my output...

Fan-fold Facade

Massive housing developments in Mission Bay continue to sprout up, trying to keep up with overwhelming demand in a city bound on three sides by water.  We can't sprawl, as other cities have, so we redevelop and go denser.  

For those of us who like New York City, this isn't a bad thing - this is nowhere near the density of Manhattan! - but accommodates more people and does allow us to grow.  It's good when a city has variety - NYC has brownstones AND highrises!  We have a collection of housing styles going back to the Mission era, with a great stock of Victorians AND very new/contemporary styles.  I enjoy the variety in texture.

Bayless

San Francisco's old Victorians were known for their "bay windows," which are usually three-sided and part of an extension over the sidewalk below.  It's a local version of the historic "oriel window," and gives a room a bit more of a view than a flat window would.

Here's a modern take on that, popular in the Mission Bay neighborhood generally.  

Bay Bridge, as always

I adore this bridge.  Even just parts of it, even backlit...