San Diego Pictures

I managed to get a few fun pictures in San Diego. Although I realized that I didn't actually remember to take many pictures of the people. When I am with people I enjoy their company so much that I never remember the camera.

My friends Steve and Angelina are the people I went out to visit, and these are their children Elizabeth and Samuel. They are two incredibly sweet kids and it was really fun to get to play with them for several days. Samuel is two and I believe Elizabeth is 5 now. The second photo is from Steve and Angelina's Facebook Page, and it shows a bit of the wonderful spirit of Samuel and Elizabeth.

Here is a Photo of Steve and Angelina's house out in the Suburbs of San Diego past the Miramar base. It is really a lovely area but you drive through 20 minutes of nothing after you get out of San Diego to get there. I was taking these pictures very early in the morning as the sun rose so they are very misty. All the sun rises while I was there came up through a deep fog that hung on the hill and slowly burned it off.

Here is the sun rising over their street.

The first morning I got a chance to walk around and see their neighborhood. The gardens were amazing and so I got my camera and was able to take some fun pictures. They were a wonderful mix of traditional flowers and tropical plants and every one was obviously well loved. The roses just blew me away. This white rose was considerably taller than I was. It was almost tree sized.

This was my favorite rose that I saw. The picture doesn't convey the depth and complexity of the color. It was a riot of subtle pale reds, red oranges and hits of gold.

These were my other favorites. Their lovely scent just filled the whole yard and they were surrounded by prostrate rosemary in a really nice combination.

I also saw a lot of fun things with flowers in unusual shapes. Plants seemed to grow much larger there than here. I saw geraniums that were waist high. Here are a couple of pictures of plumbago and lantana trimmed into flowering bushes. The orange lantana was just fantastic.

 

In addition to the more traditional flowers there were a lot of succulents. There were entire yards where the grass was succulent pants like iceplants. I didn't know the name of this one but I thought it's tiny purple flowers were just lovely.

On the other end of the sale were some really giant succulent plants that gave a fun sculptural effect in the gardens.

And I wish I know what this plant was. It was a small mounding bush form and had the most wonderful scent like a cross between jasmine and gardenia. You could smell it all the way down the street.

These pictures are from the 2007 workshop, courtesy of Jim and they show a bit of the lovely state park we were in. I was having so much fun I kept forgetting the camera. I went walking around this pond and tried to go the hill the first morning but my shoes were unequal to the terrain so I gave up halfway up.

And this is a picture that I took os the view on the road up the mountain. The view was lovely but the road itself was a twisty carsickness inducing nightmare for me.

And last but not least, here is a sunset from Steve and Angelina's back yard on the last evening. What a stunning view.

 

Hopefully some other people will have more pictures of the workshop in progress and I'll be able to repost those eventually. What an inspiring trip.