April 2019 was a good water year and all along the Kern River, wildlife flourished.

I love this photo. I was riding my bike along the Kern River in April 2019 and saw a grandpa with a pack of grandkids who could NOT be kept out of the river even though it was still pretty chilly. A sunny day with kids, water and a rope swing. What more does anyone need?

The clouds looked like a genie escaping its bottle one February evening in 2020.

I walk the dogs early in the morning and, in the valley that means fog. I liked how the fog seemed to capture the light from this streetlamp in a bubble.

This is the California Aqueduct near Patterson from the lookout roadstop along Interstate 5. I was coming back from a deposition in San Francisco (ugh, don’t ask) in May 2019 and the sky was amazing just after a storm. Then I turned around and saw the aqueduct, which brings water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farms and cities supplying 25 million people and snapped this shot, which makes it seem so insignificant, just a little concrete creek threading through the golden landscape.

I don’t have a fancy camera so if I get a good photo with my iphone, I’m excited by it. I like to think this was a nice photo. It’s a butterfly on my old lilac bush in March, 2019.

I love infrastructure. Canals, bridges, farm equipment. It’s fascinating what we humans have created.

When it rains in Bakersfield, it’s rare enough that, if I have time, I get in the car and look at it from as many angles as I can. I got this at the top of Round Mountain Road on the east side of the county looking west. I was supremely honored that the wonderful artist David Gordon liked it so much, he painted a rendition of it that then sold! I almost didn’t take the picture except my husband thought it was a good view. Don’t tell him I said that!

In 2019, I was working a job I didn’t like very much. But it took me up and down the San Joaquin Valley and I snapped a lot of photos of the beauty I found, like this golden field under a blue sky in Kern County.