A very dramatic storm around here today. Lightning and thunder and pouring rain.

This is the rainbow that formed in my backyard a few minutes ago.

So cool! This is “an actual image of a molecule and its atomic bonds,” says this. It is a breakthrough from IBM scientists in Zurich who “spent 20 straight hours staring at the “specimen”—which in this case was a 1.4 nanometer-long pentacene molecule comprised of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms.” In other words, it’s a photo of this:

I live in a beautiful place. Two weekends ago, fellow Word Pirate, Morgan, invited a group of us up to his family’s property in Jenner for a picnic. There were gorgeous views of the ocean and surrounding mountains. Here we are on the deck:

(L to R: Marcia, Julie, Morgan, Kyle)

Laura was also there. Also Penny, Morgan’s dog:

We ate a lot of food–salami, homemade bruschetta, cheeses of all kinds, sourdough bread, olives, fruit, wine, dolmas… Afterwards, we burned it off by playing Frisbee.

Then we took a hike to the lookout on top of the mountain. The views up there were even more incredible. I am not feeling very wordy right now, so here are more pictures. The rest are in my gallery, if you know where that is.

Laura

Listening to the ranger read from a book he had with him.

me

sunset

On the way home, the waves along the coast were literally glowing. There must have been some sort of phosphorescence in the water. We stopped for awhile to watch sparkling black waves hit the shore.

I have a pretty awesome life.

Last Sunday, Marcia and I climbed down a cliff to a beach where they have awesome tide pools. I have even mentioned them before on here. You have to take a scary path down to get to them.

But it was a cool foggy day, which was nice because it was in the low 90s by my house. Also, there were tons of flowers everywhere.

We climbed down and discovered that, duh, the tide was coming in. We couldn’t even get to all of the beach, let alone see anything in the pools. Also, these cliffs are dangerous with sleeper waves that come up suddenly and splash you. Even the fishermen were thinking of leaving.

But we looked around and still saw some cool things. For example:

A stick that looks like a friendly elephant

A dead squid, possibly left behind by the fishermen

A multi-colored seed pod

A naturally yellow rock

A really pretty plant

All in all, it was nice to get out, climb down a cliff, and look at nature for awhile. And it was great to get out of the heat.

1. I have sequestered myself in my office, hiding from this ridiculous heatwave. It seems to be fading back to normal spring now, and nature is doing things outside. For example, new birds have taken up residence in this nest by my front door. I found half of an egg on the ground yesterday (pictured above), so I guess the babies have hatched already.

2. For some reason, I’m obsessed with the color turquoise. It’s the weirdest thing. One day turquoise was just another color and the next, anything painted turquoise is the coolest, most vibrant, most edgy thing to me. It’s so strange that I could be into a color, like being into a band or into an author, but it feels like the same thing. I am sincerely excited about turquoise, especially the lighter shades of it.

3. I am also into tulips. For Easter, I picked one from my garden to have under the TV and then I had several store-bought bouquets scattered around the house. Finally the flowers all died and I went to put them in the new compost bin. The one that I had picked from my garden had opened wide and was filled with aphids. I was horrified. These disgusting, icky, plant-killing bugs had been in my house for over a week feasting on my tulip. I went right over to my basil and fuchsia plant, afraid the aphids had spread, but they were bug free. The aphids hadn’t gotten on any of the store-bought tulips either, just that one flower from my garden. It was weird and slightly disturbing.

4. I have a feeling aphids are going to be a problem this year….

Kyle, I want a baby leaf monkey. Ok?

Despite living by the ocean my entire life, I have never seen a whale. It is supposed to be the height of whale season—they are migrating through right now—so on Saturday I went to Pt Reyes to see if I could find them. Here is that journey:

Hmm, here is the park. It is very green right now. I don’t see any whales though.

Hello Mrs. Deer. How’s the whale watching up there? Not many today, you say? That’s not a good sign.

Hmmm, nope.

Heyyouguyshaveyouseen…. Never mind…

Hey down there. You, elephant seals. Have you seen any whales?

Hi other people. Are you whale watching too? It’s hard, isn’t it?

Whales? Whaaaaales?

So there you have it. No whales for me. I did see: cows, seals, elk, quail, deer, seagulls, and an adorable baby person. So it was not a total loss.

On Saturday, Marcia and I took advantage of the amazing weather and went for a hike by Lake Sonoma near Geyserville.

The trail we hiked was called Boar Scat Trail. There were several warnings about wild boars on the sign for the park, so we were hoping to see one. Mostly we saw flowering bushes–nature seems to think it is springtime–and pityings of doves. Finally though, we did get to see a wild boar. Unfortunately, it was dead. We ran into some hunters who had just killed one and were carrying it on a stick between them ala Lord of the Flies. I took a picture:

Afterwards, we found place on top of a hillside and had a picnic. The views from up there were neato.

Lake Sonoma

Some other hikers

I really liked this hike. It’s challenging enough to break a sweat but you are rewarded for your work with lots of gorgeous views. I recommend it.

Time for another YouTube video. This one is about cats. Cats are small predatory carnivorous species of crepuscular mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and its ability to hunt vermin, snakes and scorpions. It has been associated with humans for at least 9,500 years. Cats are the best animals. See above video for proof.