Gerhard Bock

During a break in the rain I took a quick stroll through the garden and snapped a few photos of what’s still in bloom. It was good to see how much color there still is. Aside from the cold spell over Thanksgiving, our weather has been fairly mild, pr...

Northern California is being pummeled by a series of wet winter storms. The Sierra Nevada is expecting as much as 10 feet—yes, feet!—of snow by Wednesday, and the Sacramento Valley up to 5 inches of rain. 5 inches of rain may not sound all that imp...

Nature photography has been a passion since my teen years. One of my favorite subjects are trees, and 2010 was a very good year indeed as far as taking pictures of trees is concerned. We started out the year in Australia, and I’ve only just begun to...

Looking out over the neighborhood from upstairs this morning, I saw white, lots of it. No, not snow, but frost. All the roofs were covered, as were fences, lawns and cars. Magic! The temperature was right around 32°F so I knew this wouldn’t last lo...

 Fog at night transforms even the most familiar surroundings. A quiet hush settles over the neighborhood. Sounds, while muffled, seem paradoxically intensified. What is mundane by day appears mysterious under the cloak of darkness.

As of December 14th, my blog is being syndicated on the Sacramento Connect site operated by the Sacramento Bee. All my posts can be found under Interests > Garden. I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome all Sacramento Connect and Sacramento ...

The other day, I wrote about moss popping up in our yard. In my original post, I had a photo of something that superficially looks like a moss, but really isn’t. Instead, it’s a lichen. Lichen on rock in our back yard Moss, lichen—they all g...

Trees are beautiful for many reasons: shape, foliage, flowers, seeds. We grow them for food, timber, shelter and shade. We hug them, we worship them, and we fight over them. I love trees, and what I love most is their bark. The colors and patterns of b...

I just noticed that all of a sudden we have moss growing in places where there seemingly wasn’t any just a few weeks ago. It’s been gray and damp, so conditions are certainly amenable. But where did all this moss come from? Moss on the trunk ...

On Saturday I visited Man Man Bamboo in Rocklin, CA, about 20 minutes east of Sacramento. This small backyard bamboo nursery is run by Sean Bigley and his wife Christy. Most of the bamboos in our yard are from Sean. He has been very good to me over the...