2005 pictures

Tuesday, January 4th 2005: The tree that fell in December 04 is all cut up into rounds, which are stacked in the back. This is the remaining piece of the stump, about 4' = 1.20m high and 5' = 1.50m wide. All the stuff on the ground in the foreground is sawdust from the chainsaw. At the left you can see a small part of the hole the tree left; our neighbor Nick came by with a backhoe and made the hole bigger, and we planted an apple tree in it. The wood from the tree was left to dry all year long, and finally split into firewood in November.

Sunday, February 20th 2005: Remember the truck that was nearly squished by a tree at the end of 2004? Here it is back from 7 weeks at Gene Frosts's house, where we replaced much of the body in the front. The bumpers and winch are not back on, and it is yet to be painted.

Saturday, May 7th 2005: At Bonfante gardens (an amusement park for kids) with Pooh (the bear from school):

Friday, May 20th 2005: John listening to music. The green book on the floor is the score of Bach's St. Matthew Passion.

Wednesday, June 8th 2005: 6th grade graduation, the Kindergarten kids escort the graduating students to the stage. Sawyer just escorted Jason; on the right you see John escorting our neighbor Cole.

Friday, June 10th 2005: Last day of school, this is the Kindergarten/1st class in the garden with teacher Kathy (John is at the very right edge of the first picture). The second picture is the kids giving teacher Kathy her present.

Friday, August 26th 2005: Three bunnies have gotten inside the netting protecting the newly planted gras, and are eating it:

Saturday, September 24th 2005: The Lakeside Lizards (green shirts, 1st through 3rd grade) first soccer game in the mountain soccer league this school year. The first picture is coach Blair and his wife Gina with the team. The second picture is them chasing the ball. Green shirts from the left: Giulianne, big Sawyer, Amelia, little Sawyer, John, Callie, and Jonathan. The team in blue shirts are the Loma Prieta school soccer dogs; the Lakeside Lizards won 4:0.

Sunday, October 23rd 2005: John took these pictures of Ralph cutting down a tree. This was an oak tree that had suffered sudden oak death, on the southern slope below John's bedroom. The first picture is a little fuzzy. On the second picture you can see the blue exhaust smoke of the chainsaw. On the third picture you can see the tree actually falling (look at the dust coming up from the completely dried-out trunk, and look for the fuzzy tree branches moving in the top left). This is the first time that we managed to get a picture of a tree in mid-fall.

Monday, October 31st 2005 (Halloween): Halloween parade at Lakeside school. First picture is the whole school; second picture is (from left) Cody, John as an army man, Sophia as a unicorn, and Nicolas, Mason or Emily as Darth Vader.

Saturday, November 24th: Our neighbor Joe found a dead mountain lion on a cliff, about 20 feet below Sunset Ridge Road, at the slide. He found it by its smell. It has been very warm recently (temperatures in the 60s and 70s), so it probably hasn't been here very long, 3 or 4 days, otherwise it would have decomposed more . It doesn't look like a juvenile (no spots), but it doesn't look very large either. The animal is about as big as a large dog (about Rottweiler size), maybe 2' = 60cm to the shoulder and 3' = 90cm overall length without the tail. Observe the long tail. We are waiting for the game warden from the Department of Fish and game to come and inspect it. We have not gone to examine the corpse closely, as it smells extremely bad and is quite disgusting. In case you are curious: we don't know what caused its death, or why it is hanging around the base of this tree.