Leaf Peeping

 Good afternoon, my friends. It's a quiet day here at the Traveling Three Cats Ranch. I've done a couple of loads of laundry. Mainly, we're resting up. We'll be meeting some friends at a winery to the north tomorrow, and we'll stop off at the produce stand to get more avocados on our way back. We have dinner with friends next week, and my friend, Debi, and I will be visiting a San Diego quilt shop the next day. So, there's plenty on the agenda to keep us busy for the rest of our stay. 

We keep hoping we'll get a shipping date for our replacement Starlink, but nothing so far...only the promise that it will ship. Thankfully, it'll be received by friends. If it doesn't make it before we leave, we can ask them to ship it to another friend we'll be seeing down the road. I'm really hoping it will arrive before we leave because it will mean another couple of weeks of delay if it doesn't. I told Mike the Starlink was a teaser when it gave us high speed internet for a couple of days, and then stopped working. Oh well. Such is life. Especially when traveling.

To keep myself occupied this morning, I drew another photography card, and then went out for a walk around the park. Today's target:

These variegated ones are just outside our door. 

At first, I was trying to isolate single leaves, but abandoned that effort pretty quickly. And, yes, it has rained some, thus the water droplets on some of these.

I feel as if I should know the name of this next one, but it escapes me at the moment. And just after writing those words, I did a search via Google image. Turns out it's another kind of eucalyptus.

This was a low-growing plant. I like the leaves with variegation.

This next one was growing just beside the one above.

My friend, Gloria, tells me these are the leaves of an Acacia tree.

This next one is one of the large leaves of the Bird of Paradise. I love that red vein.

This was a low-growing ti plant. It's the only one I've seen in the park.

The hibiscus has leaves. Mainly, I just love the hibiscus.

These are some large shiny guys.

These are from a low-growing ground cover.

Here's a broad-leaf weed.

Here's another, only this one has some wicked thorns.

These are new leaves. The other ones on the same plant are much darker in color.

Back at the RV, I found leaves inside too. These are from the back if the Wine Country quilt.

From the same quilt, my sad attempt to quilt a grape leaf. (I don't claim to have any talent for drawing.)

These are on the cover of a little throw pillow.

How about this one from our jug of orange juice?

Here's another from a can of grapefruit segments.

These are on the edge of our Corelle dinnerware. We've had this dinnerware for about 25 years.

Okay, and how about these little leaves on the bottle of ground nutmeg. When I noticed these, I had to look up how nutmeg is grown. As it turns out, it grows on trees, and the spice, "mace," comes from the same tree.

This is the upholstery on our dining chairs.

And this from our favorite sink-side hand lotion. This is great hand lotion, BTW. There are different fragrances, and they all smell really good. 

The real draw is that it's just a very nice hand lotion. I first encountered it at the Coldwater Creek Spa where I used to get my pedicures. When the spa closed, I was buying it online for a while. Now, we find it available in our local grocery store and pharmacy, and we found this newest bottle at one of the Kroger-affiliated stores in California. It seems the word is out and more stores are carrying it. It isn't cheap, but it's worth the cost. Thankfully, it lasts a long time.

Okay, moving on...I stitched these lazy daisy leaves this morning. This finished off the lower right corner of my piece.

Now I've moved my hoop up to encompass the rest of it. I should have this finished in a day or two.

While I've been writing this post, Mike took Smitty out for a little walk. Here you see a walker and a watcher. She doesn't seem to mind when he goes out and she can't go with him. However, if she can't see him, she starts to whine and cry. This morning, I carried her to the window where she could see him, and she calmed down right away.

It seems even cats have achieved object permanence.

Okay, so I'll probably do some more slow-stitching today. I have one more load of laundry in the wash, but my next achievement of the day will be to take a nap. Kitties have spoken, and napping is next.