The Morning After,Part II

 I started this narrative with yesterday's post. Here are the photos I took while walking around the FRC campus looking for beauty in simple things. The last photo in this post is rather startling.  Right after I took that photo, things started getting more exciting and led to the butterfly photo  that led yesterday's post.
The above photo is a close-up of some healthy-looking leaves of California black oak, the source of the name of this blog. Botantists call it Quercus kelloggii.  The tree, that is.

 Right next to the oak was a White Alder, Alnus rhombifolia.

 It's hard to look upward and downward at the same time. On the day before this walk, I had been hiking through the Red Fir forest near the top of Spanish Peak.  Hard to hike there without constantly looking upward in awe. But I kept tripping on snags and rocks on the trail, so sometimes I had to look downward again to stay safe.  On this walk through the FRC campus, I forced myself to frequently look upward then downward in rapid succession as I walked, thus staying safe and discovering things in both directions. Photo number three here is a member of the mint family, Hedge Nettle, or Stachys albens.

 The California Mugwort, Artemesia douglasiana, is an aromatic member of the Aster family that is a close relative of Sagebrush. Lots of uses, medicinal and otherwise, and important plant for the native peoples of this area.

 The Oregon Grape, Berberis aquifolium, is a hardy and beautiful native shrub, ideal for landscaping when conserving water is important - namely, always!

 The Yellow Water Buttercup, Ranunculus flabellaris, grows in and near slow-moving watwer in diteches, and, at FRC, even pops up in the lawn when there's water near the surface.  Like Dandelions, it tends to "learn" to bloom below the blades in areas that are frequently mowed.

 The attractive leaves of this small tree remind me a bit of the leaves of Dogwood, but there the resemblance ends. The attractive berries, red, green, and black in various stages of development, attract birds, so it's a great tree to sit and watch.  Cascara Sagrada.

 One of my favorite wet spots on campus is right below a drain pipe that drains what we now call The Green, a large field used for events and sport practice, or, and deer and turkey grazing. In this wet spot, beneath a grove of White Alder, is a large patch of Lemmon's Wild Ginger, Asarum lemmonii. In the Spring, it is fun to puch a few leaves aside to find the beatiful red blowers that bloom below.

 On this hot summer day, all I could find beneath the canopy were a few whitish, dried-up flower remains.

As I left the wet are, I stumbled across a dead Robin, beautiful in its own way, becoming part of the soil again. Robins were abundant around this are during the Spring, and are still often seen in the cooler mornings, but at mid-day, they're all hiding out in shady places - I assume.