I’m kind of obsessed with it now. It can be quite beautiful; especially the large gnarled logs where you can’t imagine the storm that threw something that big and heavy all the way to the back of the beach. The smaller pieces would appear occasionally and I started picking them up…pretty innocently. I thought I might make some sort of sculpture from them, but decided that I would pick one up every time I went to a beach. I was sticking to the one per visit limit, deciding on my favorite while enjoying the outing. Then one day at Drakes, the short ranger made me leave one behind. It was kind of embarrassing; Ari had also picked up a piece but we left them like good citizens. We were allowed to take the floats and he thanked us for picking up other plastic trash. However, that seemed to have turned a switch and now I’m greedier.
In the mean time I realized what I wanted to do with the driftwood. For many years, about this time of year the quail make a mess of the mulched planting beds. They are rooting for something with all their quail babies and they spread the mulch all over the DG paths. Now I don’t begrudge the state bird a meal, but there are plenty of places to root around and plenty of mulch that’s not next to a pathway. So, I’ve been laying out driftwood borders along the paths by the deck. It works really well where I have the wood, but the quail just move to the next bed…need more wood. I’m also playing around with adding the abalone shells with the wood. There is no more room for the shells on the tanoak stump. The rose is too successful.
This evening I went to check out Drakes for mid midweek wood expedition. I was the only car in the lot in the foggy grayness, perfect for wood pilfering. But there was no wood. I stopped at North Beach on the way back, for one last try and thought I was going to strike out. Maybe all the beaches are picked clean by this time of year and I was going to have to wait for winter storms to continue wood gathering ๐ . The back beach was open for the first time in ages, ie the snowy plover protection fences were gone. The plovers have probably moved out for the season and they will put this lines back up in the spring. There was still no carry-able wood. I finally gave up and picked up a piece of trash and took a nice photo of some grasses. And then I found the perfect piece. It’s kinda skinny, but long with a graceful curve, perfect for a curved planting bed. I will place it tomorrow or this weekend. But I think I’ve learned my lesson and will go back to the one piece per visit and pick up the trash. Fair is fair.
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