Blog Archives
Friday Flower Fiesta from the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden
Today’s Friday Flower Fiesta comes to you from the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia, which is where Jim and I spent our 19th anniversary.
Ooops. That’s not a flower. That’s a squirrel! Well, he was the official greeter at the entrance to the Arboretum, so I’ll let him greet you to our Friday Flower Fiesta today!
Ooops.
That last one isn’t a flower, either.
That’s Zoey the Cool Cat.
Look at the expression on her face.
She is pretty upset that we were gone for sixteen hours, leaving her all alone except for that strange lady who came by to give her food and water.
I tried to get her interested in that squirrel above but she’s having none of that until I explain my absence……..
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I do not approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
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Friday Flower Fiesta — Orchids at the San Diego Zoo
I go to a lot of orchid shows each year. Recently I found some of the most unusual orchids I’ve ever seen, and it wasn’t at a show. It was at the San Diego Zoo! The Zoo is an internationally recognized botanic garden as well as a zoo, but orchids are not something that we see too many of in our desert climate.
When my blogging friend Barb Beacham and her husband came to San Diego on April 25 and 26, I was able to provide them with free tickets to the Zoo. I think I wore them out.
We discovered the new orchid greenhouses which are now open to the public, and today’s Friday Flower Fiesta is from the greenhouses.
I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (5/9/13) — The best for the best
I would like to dedicate this Friday Flower Fiesta to two people:
First, to the memory of Wendy Stone, 41, of Riverside, who was killed in an automobile accident on Tuesday, April 23. Wendy was riding her motorcycle northbound on Interstate 15 at Indian Truck Trail (halfway between Corona and Lake Elsinore) when a truck going southbound veered into the center divider, hit the K-rail, jumped it, and flew into the northbound lanes. Debris from the K-rail hit Wendy Stone, throwing her from her motorcycle and killing her; the motorcycle traveled another 1,000 yards (that’s over half a mile!) before crashing.
Second, to Harvey Oshrin. Harvey was driving a Mercedes in the northbound lanes in front of Wendy that was destroyed when the truck landed on it. Harvey is my mother-in-law’s boyfriend. Here is Harvey’s car after the crash:
Harvey spent a few days in the hospital due to injuries but he’s at home now and apparently feeling well enough to go out this afternoon with me, Jim, and Joan (my mother-in-law) for a Mother’s Day meal at Famous Dave’s in Vista, best barbecue in San Diego County.
I’m a firm believer that when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. If it’s not your time to go, you can say prayers of thanks to God, thank modern medicine, call it a miracle, whatever. All it means to me is that it wasn’t your time to go. If you look at Harvey’s car, the passenger area is completely destroyed. That’s normally where Joan sits. She wasn’t with Harvey that day, so it obviously wasn’t her time to go.
Here’s an NBC web site report on the crash. I think it’s interesting that the last line of the article says, “The drivers of the truck and sedan were not seriously injured.” Granted, any injury won’t be as serious as death, but personally I think a few days in the hospital due to injuries would warrant calling them serious injuries. Of course, NBC didn’t know how serious the injuries were at the time they posted the article.
Readers who have been with me a long time might recognize the following pictures. All have been used in Friday Flower Fiestas before. I consider them some of my best and I use them here for two of the best people in my life: Joan and Harvey.
Angel’s trumpet
California poppy
Bird of Paradise
Iris
Aloe
Protea
Columbine
Columbine
Pansy
Rose
Clivia
Aloe
Iris
Blue Agave
Tulips
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta quiz
For today’s Friday Flower Fiesta, I thought I would conduct a quiz.
I think it’s pretty easy so everyone should score a 100.
Of the following ten pictures, nine are of flowers; one is not.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell me which of the ten pictures is not of flowers.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (3-29-13) — Groups
Just a short drive anywhere in San Diego County right now will provide you with a vast array of flowers and colors.
Take enough pictures and you can test whether or not your computer monitor really can show 16.2 million colors.
Here are a few of my favorite flower groups from this past week:
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
A quick trip to Balboa Park in San Diego
Early yesterday morning I became aware that the historic and beautiful Botanic Building in Balboa Park was full of orchids, blooming orchids.
I guess you know that’s where I headed yesterday afternoon.
Orchids will be the flower of the week in this week’s Friday Flower Fiesta.
Balboa Park was crowded yesterday, as it usually is on sunny weekends, but especially so on holiday weekends.
Usually I can park in the San Diego Zoo’s parking lot and walk anywhere within the park easily and quickly.
Yesterday the Zoo lot was full and each aisle had four or five cars waiting in it for someone to leave so they could park.
Finally, I got out of the Zoo lot and parked outside the park, which made for a longer walk.
Here are some pictures of what I saw walking from my car to the Botanic Building:
Ficus trees can be found throughout Balboa Park with their ubiquitous surface roots:
It’s bloom time throughout San Diego for the Foxtail Agave (Agave attenuata). These things have this huge, arching stalk with billions and billions and billions of flowers on it. In the picture below, you can see the dead flowers (brown), the blooming flowers (yellow), and the flower buds (green) on the stalk. Bees love these things, so be careful if you go near them.
In 1968, while living with my wise old grandmother in Kingsville, Texas, we went to visit her oldest living son (my dad was the oldest, but deceased) in Chatsworth, California, a Los Angeles suburb in the San Fernando Valley. That was my introduction to the Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia), and since that time I have been trying to get the perfect picture of a flower. This is close.
The problem with the Bird of Paradise flower is that it is so long-lasting that parts of it have died by the time other parts are just blooming.
No trip to Balboa Park is complete without at least a quick trip to the San Diego Zoo:
Remember that the San Diego Zoo is also an internationally recognized botanic garden, so stop to enjoy the many plants and flowers, too.
In spite of all my stops and side trips, I made it to the Botanic Building, one of the most photographed buildings in San Diego and one of the largest lattice buildings in the world:
At the two entrances to the Botanic Building, there are two very large Milkweed plants. Wildlife enthusiasts probably know the Milkweed as the plant of choice for Monarch butterflies, and regardless of the time of year, you can find either butterflies, caterpillars, or chrysalises on the plants. Yesterday I saw two caterpillars. The prettiest one:
Lastly, the Balboa Park Railroad appears to be open for business again. It closes for the rainy season. During the offseason the Railroad acquired a couple of guardians:
If you have some young children in your household, call them over now for a journey on the Balboa Park Railroad, located in front of the entrance to the San Diego Zoo:
Did you see the animals riding in the cars with everyone? You have to look closely. There’s a panda, a giraffe, and a lion.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (2/8/13)—Snow in San Diego
With a big blizzard heading to the Northeast, I thought I’d let you see what snow in San Diego looks like:
Actually, since it’s raining hard here in San Diego right now, I thought I’d share some of my rain pictures. Heck, since I have so few rain pictures—this IS San Diego, after all—I might share ALL of them!
Cyclamen
Fuchsia
Geranium
Bearded Iris
Wild Iris
Bearded Iris
Orchid
Rose
Rose
Begonia
Pansy
Giant Hibiscus
Hibiscus
Rose
Hibiscus
Wild Iris
Datura
Day Lily
Aloe
Mother of Thousands
Passionflower
Aloe
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (2/1/13) — Visitors
Oh, woe is me. Somehow I lost a day this week even though I always have something scheduled each day.
For some reason, all day yesterday I was thinking that today would be Saturday and that I’d be down in Chula Vista watching the implosion of the old South Bay Power Plant.
Nope. Tomorrow is the implosion.
Today is Friday, which means it’s time for our Friday Flower Fiesta!
Today’s theme is visitors.
I’ll leave it to you to determine why……..lol
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
The new year’s first warm cloudless day
I was up the entire night last night watching Novak Djokovik and Stan Wawrinka play an awesome five-set match at the Australian Open Tennis Championships. Djokovik won 1-6 7-5 6-4 6-7(5) 12-10. I think it was around 6:00 a.m. my time when the match finally ended.
Apparently I was so tired that I didn’t hear Zoey the Cool Cat trying to wake me up to play fetch with her red ring so she got a little upset, jumped on the dining room table (where she knows she’s not allowed), and proceeded to knock a glass bottle onto the floor. Broken glass everywhere. However, I was wide awake after just an hour’s sleep.
After cleaning up the broken glass, I decided to punish the Cool Cat by taking off and leaving her at home. Here she is in the office window staring at me as I was leaving:
The expression on her face tells you she’s not exactly happy about me taking off.
I went out to the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge where, after all the recent rains, I found a vernal pool that is not on any of my vernal pool lists:
As I came to the historic Sweetwater River Bridge, built in 1929, I found a motorcycle club taking pictures of their bikes:
Every single owner had a smarty pants phone, and they all were trying to take pictures. After watching them for a minute or so, I asked them if they would like to give all their phones to me, go get on their bikes, and I would take a group picture with each of their phones. That’s what I did.
Later on I discovered a new trail that I had not been on before. However, someone else was using it:
The guy was still sleeping. I looked in my wallet and found that all I had was a ten dollar bill. I put it just inside the “doorway” at the right and placed a rock on top of it so it wouldn’t blow away. I hope I brought a little happiness to someone today.
I spent about six hours wandering around the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge. I also found out that the Refuge was expanded from 9,200 acres to over 11,000 acres over the Christmas holidays. When I got home, look who was waiting for me in the office window. What a welcome!
After eating and taking a shower, I headed out to Sunset Cliffs to watch the sunset. Today was the first cloudless warm day of the new year so I thought there was a good chance to see the green flash. For those of you who don’t know about the green flash, see Wikipedia.
Although I did see the green flash, it wasn’t a strong one so it didn’t make a good picture. Here are three pictures that I did get at Sunset Cliffs:
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
Friday Flower Fiesta (January 11, 2013)
These pictures are of flowers that I found blooming throughout my neighborhood this past week. The yellow rose grows in my garden. I consider it a weed because it grows where I don’t want it to grow. I have done everything I can to get rid of it. It won’t transplant, drought won’t kill it, Round-Up won’t kill it, neglect won’t kill it. It is the rose from Dawn of the Living Dead.
Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572
If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I can recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!
