The old preacher

On my morning walk today I saw a male great blue heron in full matrimonial regalia. Great blues grow amazing long feathers down their backs during the mating season. He looked like an elderly preacher in a worn old shawl. Imagine a species for which looking like an elderly preacher is sexy.

It was a beautiful clear morning. In addition to my old preacher, I saw a night heron, many smaller egrets, some excited mergansers(not common around here), and, still, the school of salmon or steelhead.

- J

Doors

My workplace in San Mateo is near a small neighborhood of Eichler homes (the 19th Avenue Development). Eichler was a builder of ultra-modern homes in California in the 1950's. They are also known as flattops and are quite distinctive in their street appearance. In the 90's in Palo Alto Eichlers became rather fashionable and sold in the million dollar range. These are definitely not fashionable, though some have been well cared for have settled into a comfortable middle age.

I often walk in the Eichler neighborhood and began to notice something that strangely I never noticed about Eichlers before: they have no visible front doors. The entrances to the houses are almost always on the side, and frequently concealed. There will be a gate that matches the house siding.

I don't know why this is. Eichler interiors are known for their openness, but their exteriors typically reveal nothing. Was it a sign of the times? This was the era of back yard bomb shelters. Did home buyers of that era just want to barricade themselves from the dangers of the world?

Since I noticed this, I have been attentive to doors as I walk around Niles. There do seem to be periods when doors were deemphasized or concealed and periods where doors are prominent features and stand boldly in the middle of the frame. I wonder if these correspond to periods of national insecurity and of national confidence.

- J

Niles Wildflower Festival

Yesterday was the Wildflower Festival in Niles. The main fund raiser for this event is a Garden Tour of neighborhood gardens. Over the years, my wife and I have acquired a strong aversion to designer gardens in garden shows. Although these may be creative and may have interesting botanical specimens, the gardens don't feel inhabited. We tend to prefer the slightly scruffy (or very scruffy) evolving gardens of old Niles. Usually we just walk or drive on by the designer gardens. This year, though, we visited a couple of gardens that obviously had been designer gardens, but had been lived in enough years that the edge had worn off and were beginning to have a personality.

On Linda Drive we visited an entry with a lovely rose garden on the side of the house and a large vegetable garden and orchard in back. A lot of love has been poured into that space.

- J

More on the Fire

There are some pretty good pictures of last night's fire at the Henkel factory here.

- J

Fire

At about six tonight my wife spotted black smoke billowing over the trees. Something was on fire. The smoke was too dark to be a brush fire. There was too much to be a house fire. From the direction location it must have been the old factory at the end of Niles Blvd most recently owned by the Swiss knife maker, home and beauty products maker, Henkel. At one time agent orange was allegedly made there. The building has been neglected recently, although the owner had spent some money to have the warehouse behind torn down. There had been a plan to turn the lot into condos but that died (we hear it is a super-fund site.)

I watched the smoke from our back door. The sirens blared and then grew quiet. The smoke turned from deep black to white. Probably steam from the water they were pouring on the flames. At our distance the billowing smoke was still formidable, but we could not hear the any of the crackling of the flame or the clamor and yelling. We could just hear the evening bird song away in the trees.

- J

The fish are still there

I check on the fish in Alameda Creek below the BART tracks now almost every day on my morning walk. I am now convinced they are salmon. They are still there. They have not been as easily seen, the light is poorer in the morning and the water is back to its usual murkiness, but now I know the form to look for and I can clearly make them out. Usually they are swimming in place facing into the current. They have distinctly V-shaped tails.

- J


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Salmon or Steelhead?

I walked this afternoon on Alameda Creek. A strong cold wind was blowing from the Northwest, so generally up the creek. Alameda Creek, like many waterways in California, is heavily managed. There are a number of inflatable dams where the creek flows through Niles to divert water into nearby quarry ponds and to thereby recharge the water table. This time of year there is usually a lot of water backed up behind a dam where the creek flows under the BART tracks and only a trickle below the dam. Later the stream below the dam will dry up completely.

Because of, I imagine, the cold upstream wind, the creek was unusually clear this afternoon. As I was admiring this clarity, I began to notice forms moving in the stream. Large forms. Fish, in fact. Quite a number of them , in fact. I counted one congregation to be more than thirty, but most were swimming along in columns of four or five, so all in all there were probably more than a hundred. I was quite astonished. I have seen one or two large fish, floundering in the margins of the creek before, but never this many.

As far as I could tell this was the end of the line for these fish. Since they were mature fish I am assuming they were attempting to swim upstream. There was no way they could cross the dam in its inflated state. I don't know whether they were salmon or steelhead. From my experience, they resembled salmon quite a lot, but I have no point of reference for steelhead. Whatever they were, would that there were more of them.

- J