Miss Sassy Pants

This woman is a riot.

I'd better be this pleased with my eyewear when I'm her age.

Sunday Morning at the Tide Pools

"And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there." (John Steinbeck)

I concur.

save the limpets!

Just so you know, this is a limpet. And every night it goes out from it's 'home scar', the place in the rock where it has actually ground down to fit its shell perfectly, and farms. It eats all the diatoms (little bugs, basically), and leaves it's 'farm' perfectly clean every night, as you can see from the photo. There will be bare spots on the rocks around the tidepools and you know it is from a female limpet, and you can always see her, right on the edge of her farm.

All those little marks are from its teeth. If it is an aggressive female (and the large ones are, in fact, always females and of COURSE always aggressive!), and it finds any other limpet in its territory, it will knock that limpet off, into the ocean below. This makes me laugh. And enthralls me, all at the same time.

I love nature. And yes, Liz, I love the limpets.

I have this thing for old, crusty men of the sea. If you can name me all the animals in the tidepool, and you have a scruffy beard, and you don't care when your pants get splashed by the ocean, and of course you're over 60, then I'd like to marry you.

Natural Bridges State Park, tidepools.

Some photos of my friend Beth and I.
Beth leaves to head back to the east coast tomorrow. So bummed.
(this was us waiting with some friends at the tattoo place. which was an adventure in itself.)