I think the tree is an Indian Hawthorn. It’s got the same leaves, bark and flowers as the bushes that are all over the place in this area, and Wikipedia says they can be pruned into trees.
Category: Life
Spring! Sundogs! Silhouettes!
After an afternoon of ice skating, I talked the family into making a quick trip up to Del Cerro Park in Palos Verdes. It takes a while to get there from home, but since we were already up in the hills for the ice rink, it was about five minutes. My original plan was just to walk out there myself, spend five minutes enjoying the view and taking pictures, then head back, but the five-year-old wanted to come along rather than wait in the car with mom.
Of course kids have their own pace, and while he wasn’t terribly interested in looking out at the ocean from a hilltop a few thousand feet up, he was fascinated by a lot of the other things along the way, which was how we ended up getting close to the hilltop at the right time for this view of the sky, sundogs, cirrus clouds, criss-crossing contrails, and silhouetted trees.
To be honest, he wasn’t terribly interested in that view either. At five, checking out foxtails and giant clover and gopher holes and fragments of concrete slabs (in a suspiciously flat and rectangular depression) and looking for the entrance to an incredibly long stairway and climbing and balancing on logs and looking for “the actual park part of the park” (i.e. the playground) are more appealing, and I barely had a chance for this moment to register.
We did eventually make it up to the top of the hill and the viewpoint. The ocean was covered in haze, completely blocking the view of Catalina Island and any chance of watching the patterns made by ocean currents and waves far below. That was fine. It wasn’t the highlight for either of us.
Cherry Pi
Take One
I can imagine: “No one will miss it if we just take one.”
Bright Lines at Sunset
The bright line above the sun is just a contrail, high enough to catch the light without being tinted orange. The one off to the right is a sundog, ice crystals reflecting the sunlight. When I saw it I thought it was too far away to be an ordinary sundog, and might be part of a less common halo, but once I looked at how far away it appeared on camera (it’s all about the angle) I realized it was in the right place.
Fire Up the Grill!
Wait, you’re supposed to grill the burgers, not the cars!
Peanuts in Thin Mints Nestle Crunch
I was at the store the other day and noticed that they had a limited edition Thin Mints-flavored Nestle Crunch, based on the classic Girl Scout cookie. I had to pick it up. But when I looked at the ingredients, I was in for a surprise:
Ground peanuts.
Why they put ground peanuts in the Crunch/Thin Mints mashup, I couldn’t say, because peanuts aren’t in either Nestle Crunch or Thin Mints. (Not on purpose, anyway, though they do list a cross-contact warning.) And nothing in the packaging except for the ingredients and allergy statement makes any mention of it. The candy bar isn’t labeled as Crunch + Thin Mints + Peanuty Goodness, it’s just labeled as Crunch + Thin Mints.
This is why clear labeling is important: I would never have expected to find peanuts in a combination of two things that don’t have peanuts in them.