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DavidS
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A friend and I drove up north to explore for the first time about Shell Ridge just west of Mount Diablo. After the rain a week ago, I knew the grasses that had been stunted by the long January dry spell would be making another fresh green push. As I drove to from work each day this week, I noticed the difference looking up at Mission Peak. And indeed we found Shell Ridge coming along nicely. As a photographer, I like the aesthetic of oaks best when they are dormant during winter without leaves providing interesting skeletons of branch shapes and silhouettes. Also there is a time when grasses have not yet grown up too high, when blades are new, that they seem to be much more vibrantly yellow green in sunlight. Especially when back or side lit. The one significant negative is the grasslands have few wildflowers until the trees also have grown new spring leaves. Thus a limited color pallette of green, blue, and blacks.
I'd reviewed maps and satelite pics, to figure out prospective zones to explore and we found some rather nice terrain. The south facing slopes of Shell Ridge itself tend to be boring due to a large amount of last spring's tall dead and brown skeletons of alien grains and mustards that detract from the greenery below. All the open space has nice areas of scattered blue oaks, and occasional valley oaks with buckeye and sycamores {and poison oak of course) down beside the canyon streams. All the streams were however dry or barely seeping. The oaks favor the shady north facing exposure and in places are dense. The alien grains and mustards dislike those shady slopes so one just sees healthy growths of vibrant green grasses on those exposures. However given the steepness of those slopes with the low sun altitude to the south during mid winter, they remain mostly shadowed until middle hours of the day.
The many small rounded peaked hills on the topographic map peaked my interest for a visit and I found this open space preserve to have some of the nicest such terrain in our region. We did come across rocky outcrops of stony conglomerate with white shells. One surprise I was happy to find, was the apparent current lack of cattle grazing that I would prefer to see far less of in many of our local parks and open space preserves. As soon as we explored into the bordering Castle Rock park that allows cattle grazing, the difference in vegetation was obvious.
And I did notice a couple usual wildflower species rising up. Tiny white belly flowers often on the paths and California buttercups mostly on the north facing slopes. Here is a link to one of the latter I snagged with my Coolpix:
http://davidsenesac.com/_a-z_evad/buttercup2_w.jpg
And another pic of the general hilly landscape:
http://davidsenesac.com/_a-z_evad/green_oak_hill_w.jpg
David Senesac
http://www.davidsenesac.com
(Edited by DavidS at 3:22 am on Feb. 1, 2009)
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Total Posts: 76 | Joined Feb. 2005 | Posted on: 3:16 am on Feb. 1, 2009 | IP
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gambolin man
Member
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Nice write-up! I like this area, too. Great photos, as always!
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Gambolin' Man
http://gambolinman.blogspot.com
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Total Posts: 122 | Joined Feb. 2006 | Posted on: 4:21 pm on Feb. 15, 2009 | IP
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Bay Area Greening Hills
