dsglass' photos

Rango's finally awake! :) He came out of his burrow mid-afternoon on 5/2, basked in the sun, ate a bunch of mulberry leave and some flowers, and took a stroll around his garden before heading back home. :)

Crappy tablet-pic with crappy hotel lighting. :D But my first faceting project! :)

Crappy tablet pic, crappy hotel lighting. Hader to see the facets in this one, but a better image of the inside of the marble... Looking forward to experimenting both with my new faceting tool and with photoraphing faceted glass marbles. :)

Brown-eyed primrose (Chylismia claviformis)

Desert sand verbena (Abronia villosa)

Spotted in the wild! :) Recently I participated in a tortoise habitat plant survey/trash cleanup event; he's the only tort we saw, but we found a number of burrows, and lots of signs of tortoise activity (half-eaten plants, poop - some recent, some well-aged from last season. :D ). We also saw some birds and lizards (mostly just a flash of tail as they scampered away), and *tons* of wildflowers - with all the rain we've had this year, spring is getting off to a good start! :D

Tortoise biologist checking out the tortoise we spotted. :)

I recently participated in a Tortoise Habitat plant survey/trash cleanup event out in the desert. Before we wandered off to photograph plants and look for signs of tortoise activity the organizers talked about snake awareness/safety; right in the middle of that we saw the tortoise biologist walking towards us from the parking area, carrying a covered bucket. He'd heard what sounded like air leaking out of a tire, looked under his truck and found a beautiful Mojave Green rattlesnake. :) The snake was extremely active - he could only carefully raise the lid for a few seconds at a time before snakey tried to fly out - and his rattle was going... (once everyone got a good look at the snake he released it a safe-ish distance away)

Fig tree

Fig and blood orange trees. Between these two, the two mulberries on the left, and the baby desert willow and palo verdes (see notes) my backyard will be nice and shady in like five years... :D

The two mulberry trees I planted last summer survived the winter! :D

Blood orange tree

Had a lot of fun in a mosaic class... Right now it's looking a bit of a mess, but will post more-or-less finished pics once i've finished cleaning the grout off all the tile bits. :)