One of the reasons I chose the apartment I'm living in is because of the courtyard, which with its moss, cherry tree, Japanese maple, and camellias, reminded me of Japan. The new leaves on the Japanese maple have been out for some time, but the cherry is taking a bit longer. It doesn't seem to have many buds either. But the flowers that it does have are quite nice.

It's been raining a lot. It rained 25 out of 31 days in March, and most of last week. Saturday was sunny though, so Pete and I went up to Tilden Park at night to blacklight for moths. One day of good weather wasn't enough to bring the moths out. Only about five came to the two lights we had set up, and none of them were the kinds we were looking for.



This is what a blacklight setup looks like. The reason you don't see anything on the sheet is because there wasn't anything. On the coyote bushes nearby, though, we found the tiny caterpillars of colliophorid moths, which form little slender cases to protect themselves, and stick themselves halfway out of the cases to feed on leaves. I took some back to rear out into adults. Tilden is up in the hills behind Lawrence Berkeley Labs, so on the drive back down the hill at night we got a nice view of the Bay Area at night, though.