Capers With Carroll

(We interrupt the previously scheduled episode recapping my 1972 Coming-of-Age Jaunt through Europe, to interject this Thanksgiving message.)

I am thankful, three weeks before my 73rd birthday, that most of my deadlines these days are self-imposed and freely adjusted. Had I been able to maintain my original plan, this week would have had readers with me in Jerusalem, where I celebrated my 1972 Thanksgiving meal with a jar of peanut butter and the loaf of bread I hoped to stretch for a few more days. Instead, the recap falls short by six weeks and eleven nations. I was still in England, and still thinking I would spend most of my sojourn in France. I anticipated upgrading my high school French and working on my novel. I certainly had no inkling of getting as far as Israel. I had, however, just committed to visiting a new friend in Switzerland.

I give thanks for my God-bestowed but only-recently-acknowledged ADHD. Even as—at this stage in life—unfinished projects challenge me in space and time, the fascinating twists and turns of my distractibility refuse to let me become bored. I am rich in both hobbies and relationships. All by itself, my whimsey in spiders has brought me friendly correspondents on six of the seven continents. My early teaching career allowed me to teach groups of junior high students, and in some cases, my later career brought me their children and grandchildren. Members of each group now show-up richly on my FB friends list. As God supplied me with diverse teaching venues, I once had a class of Cacua-speaking adults from the remote jungles of Colombia. They needed the basics of government and economics to help them pass their (Spanish-language) primary-school equivalency exams. We taught the class tri-lingually. Later, in China, I had three weeks with high school and college students who hoped to improve their English. Over the years, God gave me experiences with both public and Christian school students in California. In the middle, for a decade, I taught a tightly-knit cadre of students in Colombia. Some of those children I had the privilege of shepherding from fifth grade through twelfth, and I’m able to correspond with them now as adults. For all this I am thankful.

I am thankful for the families God has given me, both the family of my birth, and the family I began 50 years ago (next July) by marrying Vicki. In July, I camped with the cousins among whom I grew up. We who could remember our wonderful grandparents and great-grandmother could now see each other’s grandchildren. This week, Vicki and I have three of our five children, with their spouses, and seven of our fourteen grandchildren. My step-counter tells me that in the five days since the grandkids arrived, my daily walking stats double over the average from the previous six weeks. Few gratifications in life can match watching grandchildren grow and their parents negotiating the challenges. The oldest two boys have their voices changing. The younger ones still want to cuddle with Papa and have stories read. I also thank God for the amazing technology that allows me to teleport to Brazil to help homeschool my grandsons there, and then zoom over to England to keep current on the antics of my British grands.

My life puts flesh to the end-time description given by God to Daniel, “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” (Dan. 12:4, ESV). Living now, two-and-a-half millennia after God instructed Daniel to “shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end,” I am grateful to have a storehouse of ‘to-and-fro’ memories from visits to twenty-some countries. I also carry more information through my pocket phone than Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson could access had they owned every book then in print. I am thankful for capabilities unavailable to any previous generation. I am also grateful for the Scriptures that provide a solid place to stand as floodwaters shift the sand from all around us.

As a child born just at the end of two World Wars, I have lived through a Cold War and times of increasingly dangerous proxy wars. I am thankful that both I and my children have been spared the call to arms. Amidst ‘wars and rumors of war,’ I am thankful that, in my call to overseas service, I could carry literacy rather than kill-or-be-killed armaments. I could spread the Word of Life rather than the Kiss of Death. I am thankful to be living in a pocket of peace, the likes of which so many in our world are unable to enjoy. I am not facing a winter without heating, nor the threat of incoming missiles. I have done nothing to deserve these blessings that I enjoy, just as many of the people without them have done nothing to deserve their absence. Even in Colombia, which was struggling with a civil war within our earshot, I could say, as did David, “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety.” (Psalm 4:8). For this I am thankful.

(A conversation, just now, with my Brazilian son-in-law reminds me how thankful I am to be familiar with the tastes of both the peaches, apricots, and plums that won’t grow in the tropics, and the tree-ripened mangoes, papayas, and bananas that only show up in North American grocery stores with a pittance of their sweetness and flavor. I have tasted avocadoes, sweet and creamy as only the tropics can produce them, but have temperate-zone persimmons in the back yard as I write this.)

I am thankful that though riches and fame were never high on my list of ambitions, God’s plan for my life has delivered for me a modest level of each. I enjoy a nice house, a satisfactory pension, and a yard big enough to entertain my horticultural curiosities. Although—as late as 2016—I entertained no ambition to run for elective office, in 2018, I finished ahead of the Libertarian in my race for Congress, and in 2020, an amazing 42,015 voters marked their presidential ballots for me. I am thankful for each one of you. That total exceeds even the popular votes for George Washington (39,624 in 1788-89, and 28,300 in 1792) and for John Adams (35,726 in 1796). I am thankful that both Washington and Adams performed so well in the strenuous times with which they were faced—as have generations of patriots since—and that my family and I can enjoy the benefits thereof. I pray that those benefits will continue.

Even as God blessed me in ways I never sought, He has also gratified the desires I did entertain. I wanted to leave the world a better place for my having been here. Now, I can look at five grown children who are each contributing to the betterment of mankind. I can look at three generations of students whose lives I have touched. I can see riders lined up to utilize a bus system for which God put me in the right place at the right time to help get started. I can look back at teenagers I encouraged in the 1980s—coming from the pre-literate, indigenous peoples of Colombia—students who went on to graduate from prestigious universities, and who now supervise educational systems they have built from the ground up, on land to which their people now hold legal title. I hear of hundreds now worshipping Jesus among people-groups that had none fourty or fifty years ago. Oh, the marvels I have witnessed! Thank you, LORD!

On this Thanksgiving Day, 2022, I pray that each of my readers will enjoy a time of family and good food. I pray for God’s peace among those, worldwide, who currently feel the weight of man’s free will, expressed as it so often is, as man’s inhumanity to man. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

School is out, so it's catch-up time here at Capers. All the thoughts and observations that I've carried around since things accelerated in March can finally find a place to land.

In the few minutes I could snatch here or there over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been enjoying a hedge of passion vines and grapes that I started last summer. Over the winter, I covered (and saved) some of the passion vines with clear plastic, and learned a lesson from what I never got covered. A freeze came on suddenly just before Thanksgiving. Then the winter turned mild but wet. The rains continued longer than I can ever remember. I covered a length of about 16 feet (8 to 10 feet high), but I never quite got the plastic as far as the P. amethyst. It survived the worst cold and still had green on it until almost the end March, but then it died. I have since read that some prefer dry ground when it is cold. I replaced the dead one as soon as Lowes put the spring vines out, and next winter I will cover it.

The section I protected included the bright red P. vitafolia, the maracuya-bearing P. frederick, and what the big-box home-improvement center had labeled as P. victoria (which is lavender), but turns out to be one of the whites, either ‘Charlotte Corday,’ or ‘Constance Elliott.’ Until someone corrects me, I will go with the former, named for the ‘Angel of Assassination’ who went to the guillotine for stabbing-to-death Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat in his bath-tub. She hoped it would end the Reign of Terror. In actuality, it turned them each into martyrs, one for each side, but among Reign-of-Terror floral remembrances, this flower stands out as perhaps the most delicate. As a history teacher, it’s hard to imagine planting anything in my yard with more history than that.

The white one has been blooming for a couple of months, and has set dozens of fruit. The vitafolia and frederick just began blooming last week. The primary pollinators for passion flowers are bumble bees. In our area, that’s the Valley Carpenter Bee, Xylocopa veripuncta. I see them mainly in the late afternoon, most often two of the black females, and occasionally a single tan-orange male. He seems mostly to be checking things out, and I don’t see him land anywhere. They don’t seem to mind either me or the camera, and when the females are intent on a flower, they let me approach within four or five inches.The bees are just the right height to brush under the five overhanging anthers, picking up pollen on their backs, and carrying it to deposit against the three stigmas. They seem to prefer the whites, visit the frederick only after several visits to each of the available white blossoms, and show no interest at all in the vitafolia.I first encountered an insectarium at the Berlin zoo, misnamed though, because it housed and displayed both insects (I saw my first walking stick) and spiders (I saw my first Argiope). Spiders are not insects, but both are arthropods. A better name for such a display therefore is "arthropodarium."








In early June, I began seeing a California Hairstreak Satyrium.












A week later, the first Gulf Fritillary arrived.
















The Argentine Ant tends to dominate my yard, but so far I have not seen them tending herds of scale insects.

So far, I have seen four species of spiders in my hedge.

Holocnemus pluchei immigrated into our area in the 1970s, but now is ubiquitous.



Cheiracanthium mildei needed no introduction: It was already everywhere.







Of the spiders that show up as hedge residents, my two favorites are jumping spiders (family Salticidae). The male Thiodina hespera took exception to being photographed, but I will have the rest of the summer to get a clearer picture. This was the species that first attracted my attention and launched my interest in spiders, some 37 years ago, so we are old friends. Back then, using my first set of close-up lenses, I took my first spider pictures and sent them off to a scholar studying this genus. In those days, the species had no name, and I heard recently that the specialist considered naming the species after me. I don't think my little investigations would have justified that, but it helps explain why I consider this Thiodina almost a member of the family.









The second jumping spider was a female Sassacus vitis. She appeared just after a microscope I had ordered arrived in the mail. She thereby won the right to be my first subject under the new apparatus. On a leaf, her iridescent scales would catch the sun and cast a glint of golden bronze. She is loose again on my hedge, and I will try again to catch a picture of that glint.

The summer and my hedge are still young. I will be traveling some, and trying to write for a portion of each day. But my microscope is brand new, my arthropodarium is just beginning, and school doesn't start for another eight weeks. Life is sweet.

The Spiders of China

Language: English
Author: Song Daxiang, Zhu Mingsheng, & Chen Jun
Publication date: 1999

Size:180x260mm
Number of Pages: 640 pages with 330 figure plates + 4 color plates
Binding: Hardcover, US $89.00

ISBN: 7-5375-1892-0

Over Thanksgiving I received an early Christmas present that not many readers of this blog will have on their wish lists. For me, however, The Spiders of China sits at the intersection of several personal interests: I am a bibliophile, an aficionado of fine spiders, amateur sinocologist, and I get my thrill-of-the-hunt from tracking down those little pieces of information that no one else seems to care about. I am also the man who has everything (as of today, even a new grandson). What else is left to get me?

I obtained my first foreign-language spider book in 1976, when I mastered enough Italian to go into a Rome book store and ask, "Dove si trova un libro di ragni?" From our Berlin stop on that same trip I brought home Leben am seidenen Faden: Die rätselvolle Welt der Spinnen. Colombia and Brazil share a paucity of spider books, but many of their species show up in the well-done Arañas de Chiapas, my trophy from a trip no farther than Tucson.

Thus, in 2004, when I was preparing to visit China, one of my first activities was to make a list of books I wanted to find. Amazon didn’t know these books existed, but I found The Spiders of China on the web at China Scientific Book Service.

Silly me, I figured it would be easier, more fun, and maybe less expensive to actually buy the book in China. (I also seem to recall some problem in getting the website to accept an order.) With that goal, in Shanghai, I made a visit to the largest book store I have ever seen, four or five stories high, with hundreds of thousands of books on display . . .

. . . but not The Spiders of China. I consoled myself with a thin paperback on the insect pests in sugar cane.

Later in my trip, I was more successful with another book on my list, not just finding The Edible Insects of China, but meeting author Chen Xiaoming, and getting an autographed copy. Yet I had to come home without The Spiders of China.

Nor was I able to find a copy during my short trip to Zhejiang in 2008.

However, what I did secure in last year’s trip was familial connections in China. I’m not sure how they managed the trick (one does not ask those details about a gift), but the gist of it is, I now have my copy of The Spiders of China.

From the introduction, I learned the Chinese word for Spider (蜘蛛 zhīzhū) means “knowing to kill the bad element.” That makes sense. I also learned that spiders have appeared in Chinese literature since about 1200 BC; and that my own favorite family, the jumping spiders (Salticidae), first drew mention in 1756.

I bonded with the Salticidae about 35 years ago, watching one explore a terrarium. They move with the studied concentration and graceful control I later saw on the streets in China, where Tai Chi enthusiasts exercise amidst passers-by.

Opening the new book, my first hope was to identify a Salticid I photographed on the campus of South West China Normal University, Beibei, Chongqing, where I taught English the summer of 2004.

Drawings in the book helped me quickly settle upon the genus Harmochirus (Wikipedia lists nine species, from Africa to Japan), for which the book offered two, H. brachiatus and H. insulanus.

A quick web search suggested my spider looked more like brachiatus, but also disclosed two new species described since 1999, H. pineus and H. proszynski. I discovered that the Chinese arachnologist most familiar with Harmochirus was Dr. Li Shuqiang, so I sent Dr. Li my photographs. He graciously confirmed both the identification as Harmochirus and my fear that these photographs would be insufficient for identification of species. The fact is, within a given genus, most species of spider can only be distinguished by the shapes of their genitalia. For this reason, The Spiders of China devotes some 300 pages to drawings intended to serve researchers who have specimens under the microscope. Alas, I took only pictures (see also this Nephila) in China, and preserved no specimens.

The other 330 pages, however, give a very useful introduction to the 56 families of spiders in China (a few of which are unfamiliar to me in America), and to their genera, for which a photograph is often sufficient for identification.

To which many readers may be thinking, “So what?”

Many years ago, at the end of a school year, our principal roasted the teachers with funny awards. Mr. Hollinger dubbed me the “Staff Obscurantist.” As I’ve thought about that over the years, I’ve concluded he hit the nail right on the head. I’ve spent my life intrigued by a long list of things that would interest few other people, whether in history, linguistics, botany, zoology, or anthropology. In the process, I’ve come to realize my unique challenge as a writer: steep myself in the obscure from a dozen different fields, and distill from them the details that can embellish a story and open up the subjects to readers who would otherwise not care.

To those of you who have read this far in a review of The Spiders of China, may I ask, “What kept you reading?”

I was slow going digital with my photography. As late as the summer of 2000, I dragged forty roles of slide film and my Nikon SLR for seven weeks across Europe and Uzbekistan. I still hadn’t organized and viewed all those slides when I bought my Canon G3 during the summer of 2003, and now, of course, when I want to use one of those European shots, I first have to digitize it. My G3 has been twice to China and twice to Brazil. It has recorded weddings for my five children, gotten me nearly three years into grandfatherhood, and illustrated these first five years of Capers with Carroll. On a single day in Yunnan, I shot 600 keepers from a bus window. In Pernambuco, I captured 120 images of one male Frigga sp. to get the picture I use at the top of this blog. That would have been a prohibitive four 36-shot rolls of film. I love my G3.

However, in September, I spent some time in the camera section of a big-box electronics store, helping a visitor from China choose a pocket-sized digital. Suddenly the G3 felt pretty bulky. My favorite shirt is a guayabera with four pockets. They will hold the G3, but it’s awkward to maintain for more than a few minutes. I usually carry my camera on a belly strap, but that creates other problems. Whether I’m photographing urban wildlife or grand kids, the key to success is to have the camera perpetually at hand. Even as a junior high teacher, whether I want to record evidence against a graffiti artist or a cute candid shot to forward to the yearbook, a camera in the pocket is worth two in the closet.

For several months, I’ve been checking in on this Metepeira sp. single mom where she lives in a Montrose rosemary bush. During the summer, she enjoys certain advantages over other denizens of the Southern California housing market. She pays no association fees, and faces no adjustable mortgage. Sure, there are strings attached, but she controls the strings. She thatches together an awning in the center of her web, here and there tacking on the carcass of an insect she’s sucked dry. Notice, she’s not the one being sucked dry.

But in today’s rain, she looked pretty glum. It was obvious she was retaining water. She’s an obvious candidate, first for a bailout, and then a little stimulus. Seems everyone's a candidate these days.

I took this picture on low density, so it misses out on a lot of details. You have to trust me that she has eight legs and eight eyes. That’s kind of the way I look at the packages being put together now in Washington. When an $800 billion bonus is being designed on short notice by a president, his cabinet, 100 senators, and 435 congressmen, the first thing that is certain is that no one understands the details. The second is that hundreds of pet projects that couldn’t see the light of day last year suddenly found the light. Picture yourself winning a spending spree at Walmart, up to half a year's salary, but only what you could personally drag to the checkout counter in fifteen minutes. Then multiply that by astronomical dollar amounts, 100 senators and 435 congressmen. A thousand Metepeiras couldn’t spin such a tangled web. Finally, imagine how you will feel to learn it wasn't a true giveaway. The full price went on your credit card.

And then next week we will do it again with Round Two of the mortgage bailout, doubling-or-more the Bush bailout that seemed incomprehensively massive such a short time ago. There is no way for me to analyze the Stimulus Bill. The point is to create jobs, and even Bridges to No-Where create jobs. I can’t even judge the Bailout. It’s a roll-of-the-dice whose repercussions will be felt for several generations. I can, however, make a few observations I haven’t seen elsewhere.

First, the bailouts are a de facto method of devaluing the dollar. Nations do this when they want to make their goods more attractive to world markets, and overseas products less attractive to buyers at home. It's probably something we need, but it’s something we ought to acknowledge we are doing if that is our goal. The law of supply and demand says that if three trillion dollars are dumped into a stable or over-supply of housing, each dollar already there will buy that much less, thus devaluing all dollars. It is a quiet way to roll back pension obligations and union contracts (of which no entity is so burdoned as government).

Similar situations have occurred twice in my lifetime. Home ownership had been out of the reach of most urban dwellers until the GI Bill at the end of World War II, but in the 1950’s and 1960’s, my parents’ generation found that most couples could buy a house on one income. In the last 60’s and 70’s, many couples decided they could gain a market advantage by applying a second income to home buying. True, the average new house got a little bigger, and added a few amenities, but even older homes doubled and tripled in price. In the supply-and-demand bidding war for houses, suddenly a second income became a requirement for home buying. Baby Boomer buyers were working twice as hard for the same house, and World War II era sellers were carting the new-found wealth to the bank. Boomers eventually got some of those bank deposits back as inheritances, but it was a poor trade-off for many.

Prices again took off during the Clinton and Bush years as government policies allowed for riskier and riskier loans, but a similar pattern emerged. Easy loans allowed bidding wars that left sellers rich and buyers enslaved. In California, we then penalized the new buyers with Proposition 13, which gave them property tax rates three or four times higher than the house next door.

So with that record, we are now going to pour two or three trillion dollars into the housing market. The banks will get theirs. The sellers will get theirs. The big losers are buyers and those on fixed incomes. Fortunately, there will be a few new jobs earning our new devalued dollars. Those will help cover the taxes that the next generation will owe to pay for all this.

For a lot of young couples looking for housing, it may be time to learn a lesson from the Metepeira: Thatch together an awning, and hope for dry weather.

As a dedicated fadoclast (for example, I have never watched a Superbowl), I will not be doing one of those Facebook 25 Things Lists, though I have been tagged twice. I don’t foresee enough time for making lists anytime soon. I have my thesis due to the committee in ten days, an important speaking engagement (sidebar) next month, a daughter’s wedding in early April, the daily-ness of teaching junior high, and a myriad of unexpected demands on my time. Take today, for example. I brought the love-of-my-life to L.A. so she could spend a day with our soon-to-be-married daughter and take advantage of Disneyland’s current offer of free entrance on a birthday.

In L.A., I have a son attending seminary and two grandsons. By watching the eldest for the day, my son could get off for some research for a paper he has due. For me, the height of delicious decadence is a bug net, an expanse of foliage, and maybe a child or two to share the discoveries. (I’ve never met a youngster who couldn’t get excited about a bug net. That’s an experiment I’ve conducted on three continents.)

Catching bugs has nothing to do with my employment, or getting my novel written. It is totally frivolous. I constructed my first bug net when I was 25, after graduating UCLA with no more biology than the lower division Intro course. That’s why it tickles me that my little bug-net excursions find occasional mention in the scientific literature, like this one in the journal Biota Colombiana. (See pages 2 & 3, and Tatepeira carrolli listed on page 5.) I even had the privilege of editing the English abstract (not yet on-line) for the Chinese PhD. thesis from which this gallnut article was taken.

With all this as background, this morning Natu and I took off looking for some spiders. Unfortunately, it was chilly and damp, and the spiders didn’t come out to play. We had to content ourselves with other diversions.

I like to crumple fresh bay leaves and hold them to my nose. I like turning over rocks, to see what scurries away. I like watching a little boy’s eyes get big at a sow bug.

Whaddya know, I’ve said 24 random things about myself. I probably won’t finish, though. I live under a cloud of unfinished projects, but hey, there are so many delightful distractions.
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#26 - One of my favorite songs is a tune by Bob Dylan. The only lyric goes, "All the white horses in the sun, how'm I s'posed to get any writing done?"

Cleaning out the swimming pool just now, I spotted this lady atop an oak twig.

I'm assuming she's a Geolycosa sp., just based on her size (big), but if someone knows better, please correct me. This time of year, I see many of these drowned in the pool, or collected in the filter. I managed to role the twig over once maneuvering for this shot, so she's just come out of the water, ready for a wet t-shirt contest.

At our grandsons’ ages, six weeks of development equals a full year of coursework at a major university. Sometime since our last visit, Nilo (now three months) learned to return a smile, and Natu (at twenty-three months) had both picked up names for all the other members of the family and begun to group words into phrases. As fast as I offered him new words, he took them, repeated them a dozen times, and made them his own. On a walk together, we studied the web of a Metepiera sp. in a rosemary bush and watched the spider hide under her protective tent. Then we continued on and played with Agelenids, Uloborids, and a Holocnemus in their webs. We saw a line of ants on the sidewalk and he got down on his stomach to watch them closely, repeating, “Ants, ants, ants, ants.” Then on our return trip, he ran to the rosemary bush, calling out, “Spider house! Spider house!”

This visit, for the first time, he called us Grandma and Papa.

Of course, this means I am now labeled. When Natu was born, my wife asked me what I wanted my grandchildren to call me. I wasn’t sure. It isn’t often in our culture that we get to choose a name for ourselves. I had a Grandpa Lynn and a Grandpa Howard, but somehow Grandpa Brian never seemed right. My mother’s grandfathers were Gramp (yeah, I could be a Gramp) and Grandfather (well, that might be a little too formal). I had second cousins whose grandfathers were Pa’s Pa and Ma’s Pa, which tickled me but didn’t fit me. When I spoke to infant Natu in the third person, I found myself using Papa, the same name my children called my father-in-law (though I’m not sure whether it came from Spanish or Italian, each an influence in my wife’s family). In Natu’s bilingualism, the first vowel has elongated to be a more Portuguese PAA-pa. (In contrast, Natu’s father is Pa-PA-i.). His grandfather in Brazil will have a name altogether different.

However, as my family grows, we are about to leap beyond our European linguistic influences. Early next year I expect to add a Mandarin-speaking daughter-in-law. I am very pleased with that thought. It was an early personal goal that all of my children would grow up as polylinguals and world citizens, and by the grace of God, they have. So at a new stage in life, as I have the opportunity to pick a new name, that aspect of my life could be part of the mix. I asked Middle Son how to say grandfather in Mandarin. The choices seem to be YeYe, or Lao Ye. Lao by itself is an honorific that might be used as a means of address between two longtime friends, such as “Lao Wang” and “Lao Chang,” to be translated as “Old Wang” and “Old Chang.” That kind of appealed to me. I began to think about Lao Papa.

But it may be too late. Natu already has me labeled, and the pattern he sets will be followed by all the grandchildren I hope are yet to come. And you know what? In my grandson’s voice, it sounds pretty good.

Well, we powered it up this morning to find that while we slept, five visitors stopped by to put Capers over the one thousand mark, but none of them left the required comment to make them eligible for the big prize. Fortunately, all those who entered our contest are closely enough related to the author that they are already on the short list for autographed copies of Friday 10:03 when it is finally published.

However, if this may seem a disappointing conclusion to our big contest, our disappointment probably pales compared to that of googlers who come to Capers hoping to find the music video Itsy Bitsy Spider and instead found this. We have managed to frustrate 14 such searchers in the last three weeks alone. So, our next contest: an autographed copy of my novel (when it finally gets into print) to the one thousandth person who visits The Ittsy Bittsy Spider, thinking they'll see EliZe (with thanks to arachnomusicologist Mataikhan for identifying this artist) singing Itsy Bitsy Spider (and leaves a comment).

Ever since Vicki had to work the day I took the newly-weds to see the General Grant Tree in the snow, she has yearned for her own trip to Kings Canyon. We went today, hoping to get above smoke from the 800 lightening-sparked fires that have been burning in California. Although we got above most of it, there was still enough to obscure the tops of the tall Sequoias.

With the grand vistas muddied, I turned my attention to the small delights, like Bumble Bees in the Ceanosis. . .and wild Iris, hiding in the shade. This section of Redwood bark had the Filistatid web around the knot hole, and Agelenid webs in the rift.Great bouquets of Western Azalea dotted the hillside.

Later, we walked in the meadow at Grant's Grove Village. I found this Misumena on wild strawberry.Great patches of Shooting Stars carpeted the field, but each is a jewel in itself.On higher ground, there were Columbine . . .And Leopard Lilies to take your breath away.Not bad for a day that was too smoky for sightseeing.