Borrego Springs

The flowers bloom every spring in the desert. This year because of the winter rains the flowers are everywhere. A lovely sight. We drove over yesterday morning and spent a few hours seeing and photographing them.

A little snow left on the top of the mountain.

I've photographed the metal animals before, but couldn't resist taking these.

Geraniums in the Afternoon

Went out to photograph a small yellow flower and on the way back to the house noticed the sunlight on the geraniums.

Photos

Got my camera and took these in the front yard. These were taken on the eighth.

Then took these on the fourteenth.

I'm feeling pretty good these days. And it was a good feeling to have my camera in hand.

It's been awhile....

Christmas came and went and the new year. And I almost did the same. The paperwhites I bought at Summer's Past are blooming and I came home in time to see them. If I feel well enough will snap some photos. I now know what it feels like to be rushed off to the hospital in an ambliance. Early Sunday the third I was here on the computer 4:30am and I had a heart attack. I've never had one of those before so didn't know what was happening at first. I got off the computer and tried to lay down to see if I would feel better. Took some asprin and still didn't feel better. So about 5:30 I asked my husband to call 911. The Lakeside Paramedics were great. I landed at Kaiser Zion and they took great care of me. I was shipped off in another ambliance to Scriipps La Jolla the nex day where they cleaned out an artery and put in three stents. It was decided that I needed more work so was scheduled for another proceedure. I went home for less than a day and then got dropped off back at Scripps...walked in on my own that time. They couldn't get to work on me for most of the day...I was ready to go home. I wish I had. Things went wrong and I sort lost it. Congestive heart failure. I was not a happy camper. Woke up to a mouth full of tubes and did nothing but fight everyone the first few hours. They couldn't get that artery cleared at all and now I have a pacemaker a ton of pills to take every day and am very tired.

Summers Past Another Visit

This is such a lovely place to visit. First Jackie and I had lunch in Alpine. Our favorite resturant there was closed! So we tried a Mediterranean Grill that we had never eaten at before. It was wonderful. I had lentil soup and salmon. We were celebrating our birthdays...mine was Tuesday and her's is tomorrow. Then we drove back to Summers Past and I took photos. Jackie bought some scented soap. They make it there. I got some flower bulbs...will plant tomorrow. And I took photographs.

Another Birthday...from wood stoves to microwave ovens.

The first thing I think about is I'm still here. Well I'm not that old but I've lived longer than my mother or her mother. I didn't know my grandmother and she never got to see me. Our lives covered the last century. And the world is a lot more interesting than it was at the beginning of the last century. She was born in a world that was just beginning to discover all the modern things we take for granted.

My grandmother married young. She had three daughters and then she divorced her husband. Well he left her first. Anyway it was disgraceful and even more so when she married a young Italian. She had been raised in the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Her friends in the church turned away from her. Her husband was Catholic and he married a divorced woman. They both stopped going to church. They had a son together that they called Valentine. He was born on the fourteenth of February. We called him Uncle Tiny. He was killed in a heavy equipment accident building Interstate 5. He was 39. My husband and I raised my Uncle Tiny's youngest child. Uncle Tiny's wife was my husband's sister.

My grandmother was about 41 when she died. My daughter is 41. My daughter seems so young to me. My grandmother was very unhappy and very ill. Her husband was cruel to her. I have two letters she wrote. The last one is so sad.

My mother hated her stepfather. We saw him when I was a child and Mama would not let us close to him.

Life is life. We make choices and then we live with them or not! My mother was married five times and it wasn't all that easy for my sisiter and I. I promised myself that I would only get married once.

Now my favorite thing is taking digital photos. These first two were taken at Balboa Park a few weeks ago.

These were taken last evening in my yard. I used a 58mm Rokkor lens on my Oly with extension tubes.

The blue flowers are smaller than my fingernail. Focusing is moving the camera back and forth until the shot looks good.

Victoria's Garden

Victoria is a granddaughter of the owner. I asked if I could take photos and the lady behind the counter asked me if it was for a class. I said no and then she asked what I was taking the photos for and I said it was just for me. She said OK.

This place in on the corner of Ashwood and Willow Road in Lakeside. It seems like an out of the way place but it is on the way to Barona Casino. I used to turn at the opposite corner every day on my way to drop off and pick up Hailey for school. Last year I saw all the bright lovely pumpkins and kept thinking I would stop sometime and take some photos...Unfortunately my way back from the school didn't pass this way. Can't turn left out of El Cap High School. Today I started thinking that Halloween is almost here and my chance to capture the pumpkins with my camera would again have to wait a whole year.

I could let you all think that these are really giant pumpkins...but that is a child size chair!

I stopped at the counter and bought some lovely looking peaches. The clerk explained to me that a few days ago some people from the county came to take photos. She said that the owners have been told that they owe the county lots of money...something like a $100,000 for a special use permit...Urf. She also told me that the sort of famous person, in San Diego anyway, who owns the property across Willow Road from them wants to close them down. Very sad. I do like seeing horses, but this friendly cheerful place looks lots better than the dirt brown acres of horse pastures. There should be room for both here in Lakeside.

Old Poway Park

The park isn't really old. It is a lovely place to visit and an interesting place to photograph. From reading about it on the internet it was the dream of one man. He brought some old houses to his property to save them and make an old style western village. When he passed away the land was purchased by the city of Poway and in 1993 the park was opened.

There is a small railway ride that the parents seem to enjoy as much as the children.

I very much enjoyed my time there today and will visit again.