Taken this morning. Nature’s cleanup crew digesting the roots just below the surface in an area where a neighbor’s tree formerly stood.

Spotted earlier today, a pair of latticed stinkhorn (one not yet open - the “egg” to the left). Not native to California, probably hitched on imported mulch.

Open for today only.

It’s tonight - just beginning to open now.

Perhaps tonight.

This spikey little guy is about to go dormant. I wonder if the flowers will make it.

Appearing for one night only.

Dragonfruit flower is really growing. It’s at least ten inches long and likely more to go before it blooms.

First ever dragon fruit flowers are prepping.

Eager out of season winecaps.

One interesting thing re: the AI (bubble) is that it seems to have mostly broken the decades-long refusal of many vendors to provide benchmarks outside of an NDA (or at all). You can't do a POC or trial at scale, and you're not going to buy scale without some "proof." Fun times.

No one actually believes the big AI companies aren't collecting tests that they say they're not collecting or collecting data for training that they say they're not using, right? Because consider the source, the people involved, and the incentives.

Two more death blossoms for agave near work. I saw them on the way in and came over at lunch to take a photo. So much nectar! And one has fruited.

New growth at last. It is only last year that I found out that new spines are green, not tan, and soft/bendy.

The end of the beginning is the beginning of the end for this aloe, which is blooming at last.

Winecap harvesting time. The weird summer weather must have confused them.

The Kamchatka quake is a dry run for a very similar fault off the west coast. If anything, when the Cascadia subduction zone goes, and it will go, it will be stronger, is next to a swath of coastal communities, and has also triggered San Andreas.

So many terrifying garbage AI wrapper companies. Just looked at one that plays doctor and recommends medication, etc. using what looks to be nothing more than chatgpt and special prompting. The valley has always struggled with ethics but the AI companies are completely insane.

A few days of cool weather and all of a sudden the first winecaps from the new bed I made in March.

An amazing aloe that I see pretty regularly has reached new heights.