Watching the Sun Rise in San Diego

Sadly I left my iphone at a grocery store yesterday in the flurry of activity we had trying to get ready for the music workshop so I can't post my San Diego pictures just yet. I'll just have to try and draw you one with my words.

This morning I got a chance to walk up and find the top of one of the hills near my friends' house and watch the sun rise and color come back to the world. The landscape is so different from Austin. The hills are very rounded and covered only with scrub brush, where in Austin they would be much more jagged and covered with live oaks, sumac, and small trees. The soil is very red from high iron content and the rocks look mostly like red and yellowish sandstone and black metamorphic. The scrub is mostly a combination of a yellow wildflower which looks a bit like a large sized baby's breath, some small dark green juniper looking bushes, and an upright growing gray-green bush that resembles rosemary. The tree lines mostly follow rivers and creeks through the valleys, or cluster around the housing developments and are a mixture of tall pines and deciduous with palm trees near the houses. It has been very misty the last two mornings and so the sun rise has been a very slow lifting of the grey and clarifying of the landscape. The light has been very subtle most of the day without a lot of contrast until the height of the day. I love it. I can see why artists might love living here.

I also saw three bunnies and a bob white quail from my hilltop perch, and heard an amazing bird concerto. Hopefully I can retrieve my phone and get a few real pictures before I have to come back home.