Succulents and More™

I’m in southern Germany for a few weeks to visit family. I don’t have any plans to travel within Germany, instead sticking close to the Nuremberg area. The weather has been a mix of overcast skies, rain, and brief interludes of sunshine. I haven’t done any “real” photography with my big DSLR, but I carry my phone everywhere I go so I can grab quick snapshots of whatever catches my eye. There’s no theme to the photos below, but you may notice one thing: It’s so green here! California has been plenty green this winter because of all the rain, but not like this. But I want to start off with another color. The countryside around Nuremberg is dotted with expanses of yellow. These are field of rapeseed , grown on a commercial scale for the production of oil (canola oil is a food-grade version of rapeseed oil originally developed in Canada). Rapeseed field Blaze of yellow through the trees Now for a blast of green: Not that I’ve ever been wanted to be a cow, but if I did, I thin...

Working from home has become the new normal for many people, but it has been my normal for decades. Since I live and work in the same place, getting out of the house has always been important for me to keep my sanity. That precarious balance, needless to say, has been completely out of whack since the COVID-19 pandemic began. As a result, I seize every opportunity that promises a change of scenery. And that's what I got last weekend when we visited my mother-in-law in Mount Shasta , a small town in far northern California at the foot of the eponymous volcano  (at 14,179 ft., the fifth highest mountain in California and the stuff of legends ). My mother-in-law has a 2+ acre property which, although flat, is studded with conifers, mostly western redcedar but also Douglas fir and others. Everybody who visits takes photos of her red barn: