On Monday I had the opportunity to go flying with our friend B. who is visiting from Australia. I had flown with him several times before, and I was only too happy to do it again. The world is so different from the air—what looks familiar on the ground sometimes isn’t all that easy to identify from above.
We flew from University Airport here in Davis up to Willows, about 60 miles north, had breakfast at the airport diner (yes, there is such a thing even in Willows, population 6,000), and then flew back. It wasn’t a long flight, but I was mentally exhausted—in a good way—when we landed because I had done so much looking and photographing.
The Sacramento Valley is a major rice-growing region. The rice fields still have lots of water in them so the reflections of the sun were phenomenal. Just as impressive was seeing the geometry of fields and orchards, and the juxtaposition between irrigated areas—green and lush—and non-irrigated land—brown and parched.
Just before landing in Davis, we made two passes over our neighborhood so I could take pictures of our house. Coincidentally, my wife and daughters were in the front yard as we flew over, and they actually heard and saw our plane. In one of my photos, the three of them are visible when you magnify it enough!
While this post has absolutely nothing to do with gardening, I hope you’ll still come along on this visual journey. It’ll give you a better idea of the part of California that I call home.
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| Our Cessna 172 |
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| Rice fields off Interstate 5 north of Woodland |
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| Check out the patterns of the levees |
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| More rice fields |
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| Intriguing looking bodies of water—no idea what they are! |
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| Man-made landscape vs. natural |
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| In some photos, the rice fields looked like they had received a dusting of snow |
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| Interesting patterns |
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| Orchard and tilled field |
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| Giant orchard and fields |
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| I love this photo—wonder what is at the end of this road? |
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| Edge of a circular field—check out the saw-blade edge! |
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| Row of oleander bushes separating the north- and southbound lanes of Interstate 5 in Willows |
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| Road intersecting with an irrigation canal |
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| Orchard and rice fields |
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| Crazy pattern quilt |
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Amazing contrast between irrigated parcel and the parched landscape around it
(Dunnigan Hills) |
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| Our neck of the woods (our house marked in yellow) |
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| Another view of our house |
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Close-up of our house.
You can see how small our lot actually is. |
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| Landing at University Airport |
What fun! Good photos.
ReplyDeleteA beautiful day for a flight! D thought the odd looking ponds might have been a private duck hunting club. I thought it might be the catfish ponds.
ReplyDeleteWow your photos are so incredible. It really is great to see the rice fields from up above at this time of year. I drive down baseline rd. in Roseville and see the rice fields all the time. And the first shot of the Cessna with the sun peaking behind is super! Your house looks big and beautiful. Sounds like a wonderful Day!
ReplyDeleteWow!!! With all that greenery it is garden related ;-) gorgeous shots, you don't get to see that view very often on the blogs, and what a wonderful experience, would love to do that one day too!
ReplyDeleteExcellent post! I had no idea about the rice fields. Does it seem wrong to anybody else that rice is grown in such an arid location?
ReplyDeleteI love the orchard photos... well, all of the photos really. I would love to get a top-down photo of my yard someday...
All, thank you very much for your nice words. I'm glad you enjoyed these photos. Our Australian friend visits us every summer to go flying and keep up his U.S. pilot's license. Otherwise I'd never have an opportunity like this.
ReplyDeleteAlan, large stretches of the Sacramento Valley once were seasonal wetlands. Most of them were drained by settlers in an attempt to reclaim land. Water allocations are a hot-button topic these days, and many people say that a water-intensive crop like rice should not be grown here. But the conditions apparently are excellent for rice, much of which is exported to Japan.