Amaryllis

My amaryllis only had two stalks bloom this year. I need to repot the bulbs.

Reflection

Some of the Photos I've Taken this Summer

Was up early on one morning and watched the sky turn from dark to dawn. This is the blooming yucca in my front yard against the dawn's pink sky.

 

The photo of the yucca and humming bird was taken on a cloudy day. I used the sliders on the raw image to brighten the photo. Then I used Photoshop to remove the sky. With a copy of the original and a copy of the brighter version I used a mask in Photoshop to bring the two versions together for a I think better photo.

A mustard weed was growing in what was our lawn.  In summer with the water shortage our lawn is dirt. I liked the way it looked. The mustard was still in the sunlight while the background was shade from the house. The photo didn't seem bright enough so was going to photograph it again. The flowers were mostly gone so was stuck with my first photo. I used the sliders on the raw version to brighten the photo while keeping the background as dark as I could. I then used Photoshop to add the text.

 

Most digital cameras will let your take both jpg and raw at the same time. The jpg version just has some editing done by the camera. The photographer can adjust this editing and make very good photos. Still it is great to have the raw file to work with when making major changes to the photo. I always like having both the jpg and the raw. I always feel that while the jpg file is worth while and often good it is still pretty much set in stone. What you see is what you get. I like the freedom of choice the raw file gives me. Art is what you make it.

Kota

Our summer has been strange. Very hot for awhile and then thundershowers. Now the sky is overcast but the temps are hot and muggy. Not like our usual SoCal summer in Lakeside. I have been taking photos and post some to facebook. Thought would catch up here and post here too.

 

This is my daughter's dog Kota. He loves to drink from the swimming pool.

White Bird of Paradise

About ten years ago we bought a large bird of paradise in a pot. We kept it by the front door for a couple of years. It never bloomed and grew taller than the house. We planted it by a brick wall in the yard. I never saw it bloom and since I wanted a bird of paradise we bought a smaller one and it blooms beautifully every year. I sort of forgot about the first bird of paradise. Last year I walked out to take a closer look at it and say dried blooms from at least two past summers. So this year I wasn't going to let it bloom without me seeing it. I kept looking and from a distance I saw what I thought were dead blooms. When taking a closer look...they are white. I didn't know about white bird of paradise. Here are some of the photos I took.

Lakeside California

There is a group on facebook remembering our town of Lakeside. I have been in contact with three classmates through this group. That is saying a lot since we are now all over 70. It is fun to look back. Someone asked on the group to say in three words what we liked best about Lakeside. That is hard to do but I replied my Uncle Burt and my family. Before WW1 my Great Uncle Burt Clark bought a large piece of property along Los Coches Creek. Actually he was involved in moving the creek from the center of the small valley to a channel against the hill. His property covered many acres along the road and up the hill to the top and a flat area there. He built an adobe home for his father. My grandpa Clark. My mother came down from Washington state with her family. Her mother had been raised by a couple named Adams. She was raised as Winifred Adams. She wasn't told that until after her first marriage. She found out that her birth name was Grace Clark and that the people she thought of as her parents had never legally adopted her. My grandmother wanted to meet her father. My grandmother had remarried after a divorce and her husband, Sam Dotolo, didn't like it here. He wanted to go back to Auburn Washington. They left but my mother stayed. She kept house for her grandfather, Dexter Clark, and her uncle Burt Clark, and could go to school. Sam Dotolo was old country Italian a didn't think girls needed school. Eventually my mother married the boy who lived across the road.

 

My father's mother, Margaret Toston, bought property on the other side of Los Coches Rd in a tax sale. A few other people lived on the road but there was no phone line. My grandmother paid for the line to be run to her house. Then other people signed up for the telephone. The land was also many acres and included the hill and a flat area above. My father was Alfred Toston and my mother was Lillian Ulery. We lived in my father's house across the road from Uncle Burt and Grandpa Clark. My parents divorced when I was four.

 

My mother married five times. The last time I was twenty. The one constant in our lives was our Uncle Burt. I wrote on his memorial at Find A Grave this:

 

Burt Clark liked school and math was his best subject. He also took Spanish in school. He graduated from high school. As a teen he ran a trap line but had a hard time with killing the animals that were caught. He was a dead on shot with a rifle. He and his brother and cousin and their dog often stayed out in the woods all night.

He liked to watch his father play cards at the logging camps. He worked in the camp kitchens and later as a logger himself. Burt Clark became a gambler for much of his younger years. He could count cards and deal off the bottom of the deck. He taught himself to use a cuff button as a shiner so he could tell the cards he dealt. He won the money to buy land in Lakeside California. He built an adobe house that still stands today. His father Dexter Clark lived there for the rest of his own life.

Burt didn't stay home he liked Salt Lake City and when the first world war began, Burt joined the army in Utah. Because he was a good shot they wanted him to be a sniper but he knew he couldn't just shoot a person and refused.

He fell in love in Europe and volunteered to stay there after the war. He planned to meet the young woman when he was suddenly sent back to the states. He had no time to contact her and no address for her.

When he returned the country had already welcomed the returning war heroes and people were fed up with the many problems they had caused. One of the first things that happened to Burt was being falsely accused of a murder and arrested. He was only freed when the right person was arrested. This made Burt very bitter for a long time.

He went to northern California and fell in love with an older woman. She wanted to buy him a ranch but he wanted to open a casino. They broke up. Burt worked as a plumber and worked installing pipe at the San Diego Zoo and the State College. Burt had also developed a drinking problem. He didn't drink all the time but would make himself sick before he would stop for awhile. Burt had nightmares as a result of the war.

He started his own hauling business, Lakeside Rock Sand and Gravel. He still had what was left of the business when I was a child. We had a phone when most people didn't. My mother answered the phone, "Lakeside Sand and Gravel" and when we got older we did that too. Uncle Burt sold off most of his land piece by piece including his house. He gave my mother a piece of his land and later when I married he gave me the last of it.

Burt liked to use his Spanish whenever he could and enjoyed talking to workers from Mexico and learning the differences in their language and the Spanish he learned as a young man.

When we were little he baby sat us. He taught us to play cards, 21, and poker. He really could deal off the bottom of the deck and he could stack a deck while he picked up the cards and talked. Over the years, Uncle Burt told us stories about his childhood and some about the war.

 

My sister and I would sneak into the bed of his dump truck something he told us many times not to do. We passed him tools when he worked on the truck. My mother didn't drive so we often rode in that old truck. There were times that he needed a load of fill sand and instead of buying the sand he would drive his truck to the dry San Diego river bed and load the truck himself with a shovel while my sister and I played nearby. Later he baby sat my children. I will never stop missing him even after all these years. He was truly a good person.

 

There were people in the town of Lakeside that looked down on us. My father was a heavy equipment operator and later a successful contractor. My mother didn't really know anyone of the old timers of Lakeside and mostly lived a quiet life. They could judge us because of my Uncle Burt but he was a good man and many people in this world have drinking problems.

 

This is Uncle Burt with my children. They missed him when he passed.

 

 

Lakeside Rodeo 1938

Was searching for anything Lakeside California last week and saw a link to a sale item on Amazon. It is a Rodeo Program for the 14th Lakeside Rodeo 1938. This was before I was born. My Dad grew up in Lakeside. My Mom came here when she was a teen. She dressed up in shorts and with other girls led the rodeo parade one year. When I saw the program I took a chance and bought it. Looking through it I found a photo of three girls standing on hay bales. I am very sure one of them is my Mom. She must have posed for the photo the year before. She is on the right side of the photo. Her name then was Lillian Ulery.  I think the girl in the center is Elise Fortner. She was a long time friend of my Mom.

 

 

Lakeside had a really good arena for the rodeo when I was young. People in Lakeside had wanted to bring first class rodeo to Lakeside. During WW1 there was no rodeo. After the war they brought rodeo back to Lakeside. A high school friend of mine and I went to the rodeo in 1958. In the 1960s a freeway was built through the rodeo grounds. The rodeo association found another place for the rodeo grounds but for me it will never be the same as it was. Anyway I am giving the program to the Lakeside Historical Society. It was fun having it and I did scan the pages.

 

Fig Tree

Sometimes we go past something and really never think too much about it. This amazing site is one of those things. I just thought it was a silo that had filled up with dirt and brush grew from the top of the silo. Lately I found out that it is not brush but a fig tree. It actually is growing from the ground inside the otherwise empty silo. So we went to get a better look at it and for me to take some photos. I would like to get a better view but the silo is part of a farm and is fenced. It is next to at times somewhat busy road.

Orange Flowers at Summer's Past

Jackie and I made a trip to Summer's Past and I took a few photos. This time of year the place is still beautiful and a great visit. She had coffee and I had wonderful iced tea. After the visit we stopped at a little Italian place on old 80. I love the pizza there.

Valentine Dotolo

Haven't written for awhile. I've been working on the Find A Grave website...looking for family and making some memorials for family too. We took a trip to Greenwood in San Diego where several of my family members are. Val Dotolo was my Uncle Tiny. He was born on Valentine's Day and named Valentine. Uncle Tiny was my mother's half brother. When he was young he used to tear up his sisters stuff and they got mad at him. He joined the Merchant Marine when he was sixteen along with a school friend from Auburn. They were waiters and kitchen workers. They were on a ship in Dutch Harbor when it was bombed by the Japanize during WW2. On his last voyage he worked as a cook.

He was a lot of fun when we girls were young. There was six of us but usually only four or five were together. My sister and me and my cousins Joanne and Valerie lived in the same house the summer of 1949 with Uncle Tiny too. We were in Auburn Washington. Uncle Tiny used to let us girls tie him up on the lawn...he always got out of the ropes but finally we gave him a scare. It took him longer to get loose and after that he wouldn't let us tie him up anymore. He would walk us scruffy girls to the store and buy us soda pop. We had a pretty good summer there. At the end of summer our Mother brought us back to Lakeside California.

Years later when Uncle Tiny was married with three little boys he came down to our house. They stayed a while and then he got a job and they got their own place. It is funny how things work out. Uncle Tiny was a truck driver and he went to work for my Dad and Stepmom driving a dump truck. After awhile he went to work as a heavy equipment operator on a scraper. That is a big earth mover. When things got slow, Uncle Tiny went to work for another contractor. He was working on I-5 when he was bounced off his scraper and broke his jaw. The last time my mother and I saw him we were in the drug store in El Cajon and he was there telling us about what had happened and that he was going back to work in a week. My mother and Uncle Tiny had been on the outs for awhile and hadn't talked. They made up and talked for a hour or so. Soon after he went back to work he was again bounced off the scrapper and this time the rear wheel ran over him. He was 39 years old. His youngest son was born six months later.

My husband and I met when my husband came down to see his sister after Uncle Tiny was killed. She was Uncle Tiny's wife, Penny. It took over a year for Penny to loose everything and after we had our first child we took Uncle Tiny's youngest son to raise. Later we adopted him. The older boys went up to my Aunt Grace and her husband in Washington state.

Lots of years have gone by since then. It was nice to see his marker and to take the photo but sad too.