Tag: atascadero
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The Solar Saga
We thought our solar journey had begun and ended about twelve years ago, when REC Solar – who has since left the consumer market to focus solely on commercial customers – casually mentioned that as part of the installation process we would have to remove two mature oaks and a twenty foot tall redwood. Our…
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Falling into Fall
Unlike San Luis Obispo, which is sometimes jokingly described as having two seasons: “day” and “night,” Atascadero – over the Cuesta Grade and out of reach of coastal temperance – can boast of at least three and a half. Every decade or so it is even graced with a peek at four, when an extreme…
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Egon
The first time I met Egon a tree had fallen across the dirt road leading to our house. My then-coworker-and-eventual-husband and I had taken the financially daring plunge of renting a place on a couple of acres in semi-rural Atascadero – me because I was tired of neighbors, him because he wanted a dog. The…
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Thunderbird
The first time I saw a turkey vulture I thought it was an eagle. It soared along a ridge, far too large to be a hawk, elegant and majestic as it rode a thermal nearly out of sight. When my friend said it was a vulture I didn’t believe him. The first time I heard…
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Spring
I’ve lived in Atascadero for seventeen years and towards the end of every winter I become a fretful Demeter waiting for Persephone: unconvinced that thistime the decimated, disconsolate yard will emerge from Hades. It always seems to, mostly. The fragile, fragrant white apricot blossoms peek out first, their temerity usually rewarded by a crushing late…
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Birds, Water, and Lazy Weekends
As my SmugMug galleries can attest, I love taking photos of birds. So when Skip’s boss loaned us his telephoto lens my first thought was to head out to Atascadero Lake and its teeming flocks of ducks and geese and grebes, with the occasional swan drifting elegantly among them, to see what I could see.…
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Atascadero Lake
Atascadero is a town of about 30,000 inhabitants nestled between more well-regarded siblings San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles. It was founded in the early 1900s as a utopian colony by an entrepreneur who was indicted several times for mail fraud and who perhaps didn’t realize that his beloved community’s name, loosely translated from the…
smallstonebuddha 