Good morning, my friends. The clouds cleared off into a beautiful and warm day yesterday. It was a good day for an outing to the San Diego Botanic Garden. We've visited the garden before, but you'll see different things at different times of the year. Before we left, I made the correction to Block 12 from the Raggedy project. I like this better:
As a reminder, this was how it looked before:
Okay, and then we headed out to see the garden. We took a lovely road, mostly avoiding freeways, which took us through some unfamiliar parts of San Marcos and Carlsbad. Topping a rise, the Pacific Ocean came into view.
About ten minutes later, we arrived at the garden.
Of course, I took too many pictures. I'm going to post them essentially in the order I took them. Where there was a placard identifying them, I've posted it
before the image it refers to. Where I don't know the names, there will be no placard. Maybe my phone can help me out. So, if I have something to add, I'll pipe up. Otherwise, I'll just let you look.
After paying our admission, the first structure we came to was an enormous greenhouse that housed tropical plants. When my family lived in Hawaii, we had a huge hedge of this next one. These are red ti leaves.
These next two images were huge elephant-ear sized leaves.
These were about the same size, but with the ruffly edges.
And I'm going to estimate this next leaf was about three feet from top to bottom and around 18 inches across. They were HUGE!
This is an anthurium, sometimes known as "little boy flowers."
Okay, so here's the first placard. The associated flower follows.
These next ones are growing here in the RV park. It's a kind of succulent.
This is Jasmine. Very fragrant.
This sign had some interesting information about rainfall in this area.
My phone tells me this is lantana.
There were huge hibiscus flowers in several different colors.
This looks like an organ pipe cactus, but it's a little different. It's getting ready to bloom. Those buds you see are about the size of grapes.
These were also seen in yellow colors, and those were known as Golden Bird of Paradise. I took a picture of the yellow ones, but it didn't turn out. Here’s one I found in the public domain:
Hard to say what this is...it hasn't yet opened, and so this is just a flower bud.
This is what we've always called bottle brush.
When we lived in Hawaii, there was a plant that looked similar. We always called it Pele's Tears, and there was an associated legend. (Hawaii has lots of legends.) I've looked for this when I've seen bottle brush before, but AI finally gave me some information about it. Here's what AI tells me:
The "Pele's tears" plant refers to the ʻōhiʻa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha), a native Hawaiian tree whose red, pom-pom-like blossoms are associated with a romantic legend of the volcano goddess Pele. According to folklore, picking the flower separates the lovers Lehua and ʻŌhiʻa, causing the sky to weep rain.
Here's a picture, and it's a different plant, but you can see how my memories as an 8-year-old girl might have caused me to confuse it with the Bottle Brush.
Okay, and so back in California, here are some more flowers we saw. My phone tells me this is Tufted arctotis.
This next one was an interesting tree. It was hugely tall.
This lizard ran across the trail in front of me. I said, "Oh...a lizard!" And then it ran right up to my feet and looked up at me, practically demanding that I take its picture. My phone tells me this is a Western fence lizard.
This is some sort of blossom on a variety of aloe plant. This bud was large...like the size of a (trying to think of a good example) pineapple.
Sorry about the glare on this next one. The tree that follows is Laurel Bay. It's the tree from which the bay leaves you use in cooking come from.
My phone tells me this is Aeonium arboreum...a type of succulent.
This next tree was interesting. I've always known cork came from a tree, but I've never seen the actual tree.
Here's what it looks like. This was the smaller of two. Behind me was one nearly twice the size. We pressed the bark with our fingers, and it was, indeed, spongy-feeling.
Here, I've put the plant before the placard. I wanted to use the placard for scale. This was around 18 inches across.
Here's the associated placard.
Catmint! We grow this at home, and since it relates to cats, I needed a picture.
This next one was another interesting and very large tree.
Its bark looks like concrete.
Look at this root structure.
I like the name of this next one.
It's flower was a huge trumpet-shape, possibly about five inches deep.
We walked out on this boardwalk to the overlook.
From there, we could see the Pacific Ocean. That big tree on the right is a Torrey Pine.
These were about the size of a ping pong ball.
This next flower was of a size that would fit in the palm of your hand.
And that was the end of our visit. As we headed back to our truck in the parking lot, we noted that someone appeared to have been blasted out of the shoes and socks here. These would have fit a child of about 4 or 5.
And I picked up a refrigerator magnet from the gift shop. I'm sorry it doesn't have the name of the place on it, but I'll be able to remember where it came from.
We had some errands to run after we left the garden. We got some lunch at a nearby In ‘n Out. We only have, I think, two of those in Oregon. They’re both too far away for us to ever get a burger there. I read recently they’re opening a third one somewhere, but it was still too far away. So, when in California, In ‘n Out usually gets at least one visit from us.
After that we needed to get a new scratching post for the kitties. They pretty well destroyed the one they had. We found exactly what we were looking for at Petco. And then…you guessed it…groceries. And then home. It was after 4:00 p.m. by then, and we were tired pups.
Today, we’ll have a late lunch of BBQ with our gang of eight. We’ll have two extras, making us a gang of ten. A friend of the gang (also a former high school band member) is here from Colorado, and so she and her husband will join us. It’s practically a band reunion.
And that’s all I have to tell you today. Slow-stitching comes next. Have a good day, Everybody. I’m hoping y’all have power to keep warm in this cold weather.
