Bioregional Bookshopping

Today I picked two new books at the campus bookstore. The first, by UCD landscape architecture professor Rob Thayer, is entitled LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice. He is part of a school here of bioregional thinkers and practitioners centered around the Putah and Cache Creek watersheds. Rob Thayer’s new book draws happily for me upon all sorts of local examples for his material.

The second book is Tim Manolis’ new field guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of California. It is beautifully illustrated by the author with over 40 plates done mostly in colored pencil. (It’s always striking how illustrations are much more effective in a field guide than photographs). Pica and I know very little about insects, but we had an introduction to dragonflies on a Yolo Audubon Society walk up at the North Davis Ponds a couple of years ago.