No Trucks!

I have a problem with trucks passing by our place. There is no room for them; it is too tight to make the sharp corner without causing some adverse effect. Last year some trucker, presumably delivering materials for the new addition going up next door, managed to back into a natural rock formation at the front of my place and decapitate it, along with damaging a few plants. I also had a Joshua Tree hanging over that corner that showed some wear and tear from decades of being hit by careless truckers. It died and toppled last year.

The road that runs by our place comes from the west passing by various established homes, turns at our corner and heads south along a stretch of vacant properties. That southern stretch is rarely used by passersby because it is narrow, rough and out of the way. One day I noticed some activity on a vacant property 1/8 mile to the south. Soon a contractor in his SUV stopped at our place to ask directions. He was there to give an estimate on building a shed on that lot. A shed is fine with me; I've done worse, and they have that right. A few years ago a redwood picnic table appeared there and that was okay too. But what comes after the shed? A house maybe? Even that is okay - as long as my corner doesn't get torn up in the process. If an SUV would come my way, then so might lumber and cement trucks, just to build a shed.

A house would bring a small army of trucks, with perhaps one or two careless drivers. They do have another way in; a more direct route from the south so they would not have to pass by our place to get there. However, they might choose our more roundabout route because the more direct route involves negotiating some rather rough and steep terrain. Our road also had a similar problem until our neighbor Bob Malin brought in some material and smoothed the road over. I should think our distant neighbor to the south could do something similar.
What I needed to do was make our corner a lot less attractive but still passable for a standard vehicle. I thought about a steel gate. I own the entire corner including the road surface. Rick Hiestand and Jeff Greene had recently added a few gates across their road 1/8 mile west of us. That seems to have worked out okay; nobody has protested. Rick's gate remains open all of the time and Jeff's gates don't really matter anymore because they are on what is virtually a dead end due to extreme washouts just beyond his driveway. That is unfortunate since a long time ago I used to take that road into town, but it is best this way because his gates have stopped some obnoxious ATV and dirt bike traffic.

BTW, the reason each direction is 1/8 mile in length is because that is how long a square 10 acre parcel is on a side, and the roads were laid along 10 acre boundary lines when they were cut.
I went up the street and spoke to Bob Malin since he owns the land opposite mine and asked if a gate on our corner would be a problem. He said no; sounded like a good idea. I researched it and thought about it. I did not really want to close the road off; the gate would remain open permanently, but it would send a message, and the distance between the gate posts would make it nearly impossible for a truck to navigate the corner while a smaller vehicle could. However, it would be expensive and somewhat involved and rather permanent, leaving little room for adjustment later on if needed.
Then a less drastic measure occurred to me that could still accomplish the same goal. I ordered a sign online that said "No Trucks". When it arrived I set a post about 3' out into the road and attached the sign, thereby making it nearly impossible for trucks to turn the corner. I then built a nice rock wall filling the 3' stretch between the post and the original corner. Done!

Eileen's departures
This year our only trips out together were the two visits to Tempe. We did not make our annual visit to Laguna nor any of the other journeys up and down the left coast that we hope to travel someday.

On January 16 Eileen did go on a prearranged 3 day ship cruise from Long Beach to Ensenada, leaving Joshua Tree by charter bus with a group of local women. Called 'Girls Gone Crazy', it was put together by the local radio station, KCDZ 107.7 FM. She did not really get into the 'Gone Crazy' part but she did enjoy a casual tour around Ensenada.
Eileen returned east on March 14. We drove to The Los Angeles Adventurer motel the morning before and spent the afternoon poking around Hollywood. We don't think we saw anybody famous but we did wander around outside Universal Studios late in the day. It was like any other old neighborhood surrounding a large old company that you can't really see - behind old and new fences covered with vegetation, smaller run-of-the-mill structures and an unassuming nearly empty parking lot. Looking for restrooms, we did pass through a busy restaurant around the corner crowded with producer and actor types, none of whom we recognized, but then we didn't actually walk around staring at people. We ate dinner back at the motel.

The next morning we drove down the boulevard to LAX, dropping Eileen off for her 7:00 flight with Virgin America.
Molly and I drove back through relatively light traffic and a foggy haze for much of the way making the trip almost surrealistic. We were home by 9:00 AM. Having left Molly with me, Eileen's trip back was uneventful and less expensive than in previous years. She enjoyed having a computer screen at her seat where she could select her meal and perform other functions.

The decision to leave Molly was strongly influenced by the skilled January 15 landing of a US Airways plane on the surface of the Hudson River. When I heard about that, my first concern was whether or not there were any pets in the baggage compartment. There probably were not since the airlines we have flown absolutely refuse to transport pets during cold weather.

Finding my land
On April 13 at about 4:00 PM I decided to take advantage of a cloudy sky and afternoon shadows to climb the hill in search of the 4th corner. Since day 1 I have know where the SW corner is because it is marked by an old weathered stake across the road from our driveway. A couple of years ago I climbed the hill and with determination found the NW corner and then the SE corner, both marked with brass tags glued to immovable boulders, but the NE corner has remained allusive. This time I printed out a satellite photo of the property which unclearly shows the entire 10 acre parcel with white lines I carefully plotted to mark the precise borders.
I carried a gallon jug of water and a small bowl in a backpack so that Molly and I would not succumb to dehydration. I also carried a 10' white PVC pipe for placing on the NE corner as I had the others, and some rope in case it is needed. I did my best to climb straight up the intangible center line that should get us to that missing corner. When you get up into that enormous terrain of outcrops, house sized boulders and ridges it becomes easy to lose your bearings. After many twists and turns to get around impassable formations, you not only lose that center line but you lose any sense of where you are in that 8x8 low-res photo. As you near the top everything gets monumentally bigger and steeper requiring considerable time and exploration just to find passageways that we could get through, around or over.
Eventually it became too much for Molly. She could not leap as far as I could stretch and in spite of plenty of water breaks in the shadows of large boulders she was getting exhausted. Over the last few months she had become a very adept and enthusiastic climber, gaining considerable strength as she explored our hillside on her own terms, but I think the affects of having had lime disease at an earlier age were taking their toll. I found a good place to stow the pipe and took photos so that I could find it the next time around. We returned downhill with me seeking pathways that would minimize her having to exert herself. We had been up there for an hour and a half.

I will return perhaps next year but without Molly so that I can focus on the search instead of worrying about her. Obviously the low-res photo isn't going to help. I am going to try another idea. I have found the map coordinates of the NE corner on Google Maps. After I figure out how to convert them to GPS coordinates I will key them into my portable Garmin and see if that will get me to that small brass tag on the hill:
34.104881,      -116.291942 (map)
h ddd° mm.mmm', h ddd° mm.mmm' (GPS)


This quest has been driving me up the wall (er, hill) since I made my down payment on the land in 1968. I took an extra job back then while I was still in school just to make the payments so even 35 mm film for my camera was a significant expense. But I bought that film and I climbed throughout that hill taking a lot of pictures. I made blowups of each photo in my mini-darkroom back home in Costa Mesa and I overlapped them on the floor trying to get a perspective, but it didn't really help; too many different positions and angles that didn't want to match up.

What I hope to do now is mark each corner with a pole and then hire a professional to fly overhead with a belly camera and take some high resolution shots of the entire 10 acres from varying angles. I may even drop a white plastic life preserver around each pole when the time comes to make sure it is clearly visible.

For some reason the satellite photos of my area never seem to improve in resolution even though they are updated every few years. The most recent satellite photo appears to have been taken in January or February of 2007, 2 1/2 years ago. I hear of new satellites going up every so often, presumably with better cameras, but I have yet to see any improvements.

The honey bees
On April 16 the bees came by for a drink. I usually see 2 or 3 hanging around, occasionally rescuing one from the gray water bucket, but this time there were a good 50 or 60 of them loosely swarming around the big rubber dog water dish. I assume one of them must have been a young queen on her way to establishing a new colony though I have seen no sign of a nest in the neighborhood. I have read that if you can determine their general flight path you can follow them to their home, but I have had no luck in that endeavor.

This swarm showed up about 10:00 AM. They hung out for a few hours and then they were gone. I spent much of that time fishing strays out of the water with a strainer and releasing them in the sun to dry off, recover and fly away, though most were smart enough to simply perch on the rocks in the water and gently sip to their hearts content. I had put those rocks into the water dish years ago so that the occasional clumsy lizard would have a way of climbing out after falling into the water. Birds and white tailed squirrels would also occasional visit the dish.

A long time ago in another land, soon after adding a second story to our New Jersey home, a massive colony of honey bees found its way into a wall on the side of a gabled dormer that projected from the new roof. It was quite a sight and quite disconcerting though my young daughters found it fascinating. I called around and found a beekeeper who loaned me a little device that you tape over the entrance to the hive. It allows the bees to exit the hive, but they can't get back in. Eventually they were gone and I returned the device.

That is when I learned that North American honey bees are tame; there is no need to fear them unless they are agitated. Even then the sting is insignificant, though it kills the bee and you have to pull the stinger out. From then on, following his instructions, whenever I found a bee caught inside a window I would lick my finger, place it under the bee until he crawled onto it, and then carry him outside and blow him off.

But when bees are caught in water they are highly agitated and, as I found out, they will sting if you use the finger method; hence a gentle strainer.

Let me add a word of caution here. Honey bees are fuzzy. If they are not fuzzy than they are yellow jackets or wasps and those are not tame. Likewise any honey bees that have emigrated from South America. They, I understand, can be ferocious though they tend to confine themselves to the very hot southern areas, not including Southern California so far. The way to tell the difference is that if you get near them and they suddenly attack you, they came from South America and you should run very fast.

A Desert Tortoise Trail
On April 27 at about noon Molly began letting me know that something exciting was going on underneath the trailer. Her excitement was so unusual in that quiet place that I got up from my office chair in the utility house and went out onto the surrounding deck to see what it was all about. I looked down through the 5" gap between the deck and the trailer and discovered a good sized Desert Tortoise crawling back and forth the length of the trailer and deck. Her shell was about 11" front to back.

I think she came from the southeast and was trying to proceed northwest but had come across this peculiar obstruction barring her way, that is the trailer, deck and utility house, all mounted on 4x4 posts and/or 10" diameter concrete pilings. Where the southern edge of this combination is nearly 2' off the ground, the far north edge is only about 3" above grade as the ground slopes upwards. The western side is completely closed off by a rock wall. The eastern side is wide open but obviously in the wrong direction for her needs and of course she was not interested in turning back the way she had come.
It is intriguing that the tortoise was able to see that far ahead and know that her shell would not fit. How did she know that her 4" high shell could not get through that 3" gap about 20' ahead? When she was younger and smaller she probably did come this way and did make it through. Her ancestors had probably been taking this path long before mankind showed up; long before this particular man had niavely erected this barrier across their traditional path.
It makes me think that I should take everything I built and raise it a foot or so higher. What I can do when I return is widen that 3" gap beneath the far edge with a pick and shovel so that future passersby can see a clear passage through. I had in fact intentionally left the gap at 3" because when I do what I do, I try to leave the natural terrain as is. I might add to it, but I try not to take from it. The former is temporary, but the latter is permanent.

When she reached the end of the trailer I picked her up and carried her around to the wash on the other side of my land grab and set her down. She then proceeded to eat much of the vegetation in that area, especially favoring the Desert Dandelions. That was the end of the magnificent wildgarden that I had intensely photographed only a few days before and eventually added to my 2008 Gallery. She continued northwest, as though nothing had happened.
The next day at about 4:00 Molly again let me know that something was going on. Again there was a tortoise under the trailer. This one's shell was about 8" front to back. I brought him out from under and set him down in the wash. He had no interest in eating anything as he continued northwest following the exact same trail as his predecessor.

You may have noticed a gender change here. Where I show 10 photos here, I actually took 146 tortoise shots overall. Studying them I have concluded that the smaller tortoise has a male-specific hook at the front of his base shell under his head which is what they use to flip other tortoises over in battle. I would also have to assume that the reason he didn't stop to eat was because he was chasing the female down in hopes of getting a little action.
On May 4th at about 5:20 PM he returned, heading south this time. This would be 6 days since we had last seen him. I knew it was the same tortoise because of a distinct scar on his shell. This time he was in no hurry and hung around for a couple of hours. He ate some of the weeds that were growing between the rocks that cobble my driveway, which I appreciated.

He then took an interest in the work I had been doing, climbing up to where I had recently covered the filler pipe to my new water tank and followed that path eastward up the hill for awhile. Then he turned north and crossed over to where I had covered the 2nd pipe and followed that southwest path down to some stone steps I had just laid. This meant that he would have to drop off of the top step so he stopped and studied it for awhile, about 25 minutes.
He apparently concluded that the drop would be okay and that there was a clear path ahead, as he pitched forward and dropped-scrabbled to a small clearing below that step. He spent another 20 minutes or so exploring that area and then he descended the remaining steps to ground level where he resolutely turned south, passed over the cobbled driveway again, and headed out.

I had not really been sure of what path these tortoises were taking so I decided to follow him. He crossed the rest of the driveway out into the road that heads south. I was glad that this road was rarely used these days and that I had just made that even less likely by constricting the corner with a rock wall and the aforementioned sign. He climbed to the first ridge on the road and then turned a sharp left and headed off the road aways and under a bush where he pulled into his shell and went to sleep. So much for my following him. That was 7:19 in the evening.
At 6:15 AM I returned to his bush during my morning coffee but he was still asleep so I left him alone. Sometime later I took another look and he was gone. Maybe next time I will sit and wait, and then follow to see where this ancient path leads.

I have to assume that they have been passing through here every year at about this time and that of course they do find their way around my digs. The only difference is that Molly is here to let me know when something is happening, where in the past she had flown back with Eileen, leaving me completely ignorant of what was going on around me. However, I will increase that 3" gap to something tortoise-friendly when I return.

Birds
A small bird moved into our new carport above the trailer and established a nest inside the front most 3-sided steel tie that holds the peak together. She was hyper sensitive, shooting out into the sky anytime I happened to pass too close, so I tried not to do that too often. Even if I simply looked towards her nest she would freak out and shoot for the sky, so I never got a good look at her. The first few times she would fly straight at my head with a great flutter of wings but never quite touching. I hope she does not drop a layer of guano on my roof. I'll have to check for that when we return in the fall. Funny, there are other birds that will get within a few feet of me as they hunt for seeds and bugs, with almost no concern whatsoever, such as what may be a red House Finch pair in the photo to the right.

Okay now here's the weird part: I have just spent over an hour researching both birds online. With close-ups of the perched pair and only a silhouette of the other up in the carport, I compared location, size, beak, and the female's color of brown. After all that I am beginning to suspect that they may be one and the same.

There is a very interesting, well done and informative guide on how to attract finches to your backyard. Check it out.



Copyright © 2009, Van Blakeman