I made this!

I love to cook, but baking bread has always scared me. The recently discovered NY Times no-knead recipe converted me with its ease and fantastic taste and interior texture, but the loaf still looked a bit amateurish. Cooks Illustrated "almost no-knead" to the rescue (hat tip to M.O.)! It went quite nicely with tonight's white bean and kale soup in homemade chicken stock, if I do say so myself. Pizza at Howie's tomorrow night!

Bees like miners lettuce too...

... I guess, although this gal seemed strangely disinterested.

Jonathan Richman

Back in the day I enjoyed artfully artless music like this:



And I guess he was kinda cute in "There's Something about Mary." But in my advanced years, I tend to prefer artlessly artful music, like, say, Blind Willie Johnson. Jonathan Richman sounds more like precious pretentious crap than it used to. Guess I'm gettin' old...

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 9

Don't let anyone tell you pop music got better after 1960. And I'm not even considering Sinatra... de-bop-she-bop!

Ceanothus cuneatus

The blue beauties of the Ceanothus genus attract much of the attention this time of year, but with its graceful arching structure, smooth and appealingly rounded foliage, and showstopping snow-white blossoms, Ceanothus cuneatus has a claim to being the best of the bunch. They are at their peak in the hills of San Mateo County, in this case at Pulgas Ridge.

From Pulgas Ridge, March 10, 2012

Up close...

From Pulgas Ridge, March 10, 2012

And an unusual plant with not just one, but two fantastic popular names: fetid adder's tongue, or slinkpod (Scoliopus bigelovii):

From Pulgas Ridge, March 10, 2012

Woodrat project, vol. 4

Woodrats in abundance at Pulgas Ridge Open Space Preserve. Some decent dens, including this nifty construction up a tree:

From

Oh pretty please!

GOP slugfest could drag on till June.