Tonight I was looking through some pictures taken about 10 years ago and found these interesting pictures from Alviso Adobe Park in Pleasanton, California.

The park is centered around an adobe house built in 1854 by the Alviso family. The park is very scenic, especially the majestic Oak trees by the house and dairy building.

I always enjoy seeing lone oak trees when I travel through the hill country of California. I really like the shadows thrown by the branches of this oak tree. This tree is close to the Alviso Adobe Park.

Of course with the oak trees you will often find oak galls. These are formed by the secretions of gall wasp larvae and are used as nourishment by them during their metamorphosis into adult wasps.

There is always a lot of interesting native plants at the Alviso Adobe Park.

The park landscaping is very well done and they use only plants that would have been there back in the 1800’s.

I believe that this is a red-backed jumping spider (Phidippus johnsoni). This would be a female because of the black stripe on the back. These spiders are not very big, but they can jump a distance about five times their length.

The background is the leaf of a large cactus. If you know how small the spacing of the areoles are on a cactus then you can get an idea of how small the spider is.

This is a small sampling of the pictures I have taken in the park, I may have to share more later.

I hope you liked this little look at nature.

Steven