Nature Boy

"I think we've got him surrounded!"

• Awesome camping trip this weekend with husband and baby. Didn't plan to stay the night, so after we stupidly let Jackson play with the faucet, we had to bundle him in a shopping-cart cover, a sweatshirt and sleeping bags to keep him warm overnight! We were at the slightly seedy La Jolla Indian Reservation campground (visited my first three or four Indian reservations on the way there--there's a strip of them if you head east from Temecula), which sits at the base of scenic Mount Palomar. During the course of the day, we were gifted some amazing tamales (can't wait for Christmas, when they should be available everywhere throughout L.A.), we showed Jackson a genuine babbling brook  (as manufactured by God, not a landscape architect) under a canopy of ancient oak trees, and we saw a real life awesome wild tarantula!
• Man, babies screw up all your previously maintained certainties. I used to welcome all things great and small into our yard, but now that Jackson's here, I've started killing black widow spiders (I don't think they're out to get us in any way shape or form, and from what I understand a bite is a managable medical situation, not life or death, but what if?!!!?), and now I'm going to start raking mushrooms out of the lawn. Tonight, while I was raking leaves, Jackson found a white mushroom in the grass and brought some pieces of the cap over to show me. I ran him inside and washed his hands, and I don't believe he ate any of it*--I'm convinced toddlers bring you dangerous things because they understand the danger to some degree, and they want to make you aware that it's there--but I don't think I should risk mushroom playtime again in the future. I love fungi, so this bums me out, but I guess I can always reintroduce the danger when he's older. Heh.

Further reading: Everyone Wants Lunch, the Ecosystem of the Garden

*Although I'm totally sneaking into his room every 30 minutes to pull on his ear to make sure he's still alive.