can someone please identify this plant? It smells like a brewery or spilled beer from the night before (bad photo, sorry)
That's Japanese privet,
Ligustrum japonicum, a common ornamental plant in lowland California.
California is an incredibly diverse place, with elevations from 96 meters below sea level to 4700 meters above sea level, average annual precipitation from 60mm to 3000mm, temperature extremes from 56 C down to -42 C, and snowfall from zero to an all-time record of 2245 cm (88 feet). This great range of conditions result in everything from desert salt flats to temperate rain forests and mountain glaciers, all laid out over a distance of almost 1300 km which is farther than the air distance from Berlin to Rome. That means tremendous photographic opportunities, even before considering the human-made environment and the great diversity of people found here.
Frank is currently visiting the San Francisco-San Jose area, which has valleys, hills, and low mountains having a coastal Mediterranean climate (somewhat rainy winters with little frost, and dry summers). This mild, sunny climate affects everything from ecosystems to architecture to culture. Coastal southern California (Los Angeles, San Diego) has a warmer, drier, and sunnier version of this climate. Other parts of the state diverge greatly from these conditions - hotter, colder, wetter, drier, cloudier, etc. There is no one typical California, but what people hear about in other parts of the world are either the mild coastal cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco) or the famous sights elsewhere (Yosemite, Death Valley, etc.).
