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Lois: What's it like in California?

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LoisRichter:
I'm starting this thread to have a place to share with you images of my home, town, and region.  I'm enjoying hanging out at the "Arty Images" thread (http://www.srgc.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=8529.0)  and would like to get to know folks from there a little better.  After I post a few things here, I'll put a link to this thread in my signature.  I'm hoping to hear that other folks have threads where they have put up photos of their part of the world also. 
     So here goes...

First here's a recent photo of me.  Well, not so recent ...  This self-portrait in a mirror was taken about 1972, but not printed until re-discovered (in an uncut roll of film!) 30+ years later.  (I have messed with the image a little.)
Next is an ATC (artist trading card) that I  used as my calling card for a while.
Finally, a photo of me in the radio station studio.  (That one looks the most like I do today.)

LoisRichter:
Next are images of where I often hang out. ...

First the radio station -- KDRT-LP-FM 95.7 in Davis California -- where Don Shor and I do the "Davis Garden Show" weekly on Thursdays at Noon PST.  You can listen to the LIVE show streaming at KDRT.org and even call in!  Each program is re-aired Saturday at 9am, archived at DavisGardenShow.com, and podcast thru iTunes.  Here is Don in our space preparing for the show.  (We each also do separate shows.  Mine is called "That's Life" and is on Thursdays at 1:00 PST.  He does jazz one night.)

The second photo is of the Quaker Meetinghouse in town.  (Of course I messed with the image!)

Finally is my home.  This is from a few years ago when we removed a tree.  I particularly like this picture because it shows off our weird sense of humor.  (This, again, is an ATC.  I made it for a swap several years ago.)

Maggi Young:
Lois, It's great to learn more about you.
I've been listening to the i-player of your radio show....  so much easier to "know" someone when you have heard their voice!

I hopethis will encourage forumists to make sinmilar threads. So many of the introductory posts were lost when we  lost the First Forum Archive and there are so many new folks that it would be fun to have a new batch of intros/reintroductions.

LoisRichter:
Yolo County is mainly agricultural.  But where there aren't fields or cities, we also have a lot of wetlands.  Between Davis and Sacramento (15 miles away) there is "bypass" which is a flood plain that is used to divert water from the Sacramento River so that it doesn't inundate the cities as it used to during major winter storms.  Roads crossing it are raised up on "causeways" and no buildings can occur in the actual bypass area.  Most of it is used for growing crops in the summer; but some has been restored to seasonal wetlands similar to what would have existed in California before Europeans settled here to plow and plant.  Some of these wetlands are very near Davis and are one of my favorite places to go birding.  There are both ponds and dry areas in the summer, entirely flooded some winters.
     Here are a few images from there.
The water, the causeway (at dawn in a morning fog), Killdeer and Gold-Crowned Sparrow in the winter, and Redwing Blackbird and Brown-headed Cowbird in the spring/summer.

LoisRichter:
     Most of Yolo County is in the great Central Valley of California which is absolutely FLAT.  The elevation of Davis is 54 feet -- and it takes an hour to drive to the ocean.  Like I said -- FLAT!!!  The central valley is a sedimented-in former inland sea, so bedrock is hundreds of feet deep in many places and ours is "Class One Agricultural Soil" -- the best there is.  Around here the highest points are the buildings on campus, the freeway overcrossings, and the levees that confine the bypass floodplain.  When storms sweep across the valley, you can see them coming for miles.  (Picture 1 below is of a country road with a storm coming.)
     In the winter we often have "tule fog" in the morning.  Usually it burns off by mid-day. (Picture 2 is a Valley Oak <Quercus lobata> atop a levee seen at dawn in the fog.  The yellow color is natural, and the grey areas are caused by shadows UP onto the fog because the sun is barely risen = no modifications to this one! The causeway photo in an earlier post was taken the same morning.)
     The western end of the county includes some of the Coastal Range (rolling hills into low mountains) which separate the central valley from the ocean.  (Picture 3 is taken from along one of the roads up there.)
     

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