What is this? 01-10-09

This is a chicken drinking water in a gutter....

... at my local Starbuck's drive thru! Did she follow me home from San Juan Bautista? This Starbuck's is in Anaheim, for goodness sakes. The barista said she had been around for a month, but this is the first time I have seen her. Weird.

We know who this is - the Poodle Prince. He decided I was not paying enough attention to him and tore up two paper towels. I looked at him, he looked at me, he started tearing again. I told him to stop, he started tearing again. He will be with me until Monday. I sure hope I can give him enough attention lest he tear up every paper towel in the house.

And the rose is... 01-10-09

Joan Samuelson, super gardener, has identified the rose as "Rosa Fourth of July". Here are some URLs showing the blossoms:
http://www.adamsons.ca/climbers.html
http://tinyurl.com/8ut8lg
http://tinyurl.com/7l97t7

Name of the rose? 01-09-09

My friend Toni and I met for lunch Wednesday in the old town area of the city of Orange. The restaurant Rutabegorz is such a reliable place to eat - there are three locations and the food is pretty much the same at each. They recently started offering 'small' salads in addition to their regular which comes in a medium sized mixing bowl! I've never come close to eating all of one if their salads and I didn't this week either. The 'small' is not small enough. But I brought the rest home in a doggie box and had it for dinner last night. Located in an renovated 1900s house they have a lovely patio area and next door they have converted another house into a bed and breakfast. To enter the B&B you walk through an arch covered with a lovely single blossom climbing rose. It appears to have been there for a very long time and the blossom seems familiar, but I can't remember a name and haven't been able to find it online. Does anyone know the name? When the lady at the B&B saw me photographing she came out to see if I knew the name. I told her if I could find out I would let her know.

This image shows how light the backs of the blossoms are.

While this one catches all the stripes and dots on the front.

Corky is going to be here all weekend, so we are both 'happy campers' at Camp Del. It is very windy so there are all sorts of taps and bangs and scratchy sounds. Neither of us is afraid, but it is nice to have company.

Happy Bird Day 01-08-09

A corny title, I know, but it applies to this day. This morning early I heard a mourning dove calling - a first for the new year - and there was a house finch in my neighbor's TV antenna.

I stopped at Starbuck's lot to see if there were any white pelicans and there were! Along with a LOT of fishermen. There are 'native' (as much as anything is native to SCalifornia) fish, but this lake, like all others, is stocked periodically.

I need a MUCH better camera to photograph such long shots, but I think you can see a boat in the water in the background - just below the red truck. After watching for about a half hour I decided that the goal of the boat was to chase the pelicans. This is suppose to be a protected wildlife area (I presume fish are not wild life), or so the signs say. I drove around to the entrance to the lake (about where the clump of trees are on the right)....

and scared up a few guinea fowl inside the gate. I stopped at the entrance kiosk and asked the guy if he knew there was a boat chasing the pelicans. Yeah, sez he, they are catching the fish - they belong in the ocean. I replied that white pelicans are fresh water birds. And he poleaxed me with, " I don't care, this is private property and the pelicans are trespassing." And I drove away thinking about who to call to find out if there is actually a prohibition against pelican trespassing!

We did have a little earthquake in SCalifornia this evening. I felt it as just a little rocking, but the people in San Bernardino thought it was "The Big One", since they were right on top of the epicenter. But it was only 4.3 and there were no injuries and no major damage. Mostly items off of shelves.

Almost Wordless Wednesday 01-07-09

This is a bittern, an elusive marsh bird which hides by gripping two reeds and pointing its beak straight up. Thus it greatly resembles just another reed.

Books 01-06-09

As I have mentioned previously, I read a lot and have all of my life. When I first went to school the teacher was astonished that I could read; not War & Peace, of course. When she asked my mother about this she discovered that nobody had actually taught me, but my grandparents and my father read to me and I sort of followed along. This doesn't make me a genius by a long shot, but it is just something I do, like breathing. Well, that may be carrying it a little too far. My mother was always after me to go outside and play and she would search my room for flashlights so I wouldn't read under the covers. I know that some of you have the same life long affliction and we have 'talked' about it in our blogs. At one time I thought it would be great to help non-readers learn to read, but I found I wasn't very good at it because I don't have a concept of not being able to read. I doubt I could teach anyone to breath either.

Many people go to the library to find books. I do that, but I hate to take library books when I travel. I buy a lot of second hand books from ABE.com or at one of the nearby used book shops or occasionally from Amazon. I also trade books with friends. I read about a book a week, Dick Bednar reads about a book a day - so he could keep me pretty well supplied if we always had the same taste! However, there is something about having a brand new book that belongs just to me that is a special treat. My little grandmother sent me books as gifts when I was a child and I was in heaven. I still have a few of them - memories with hard covers! Borders had a 40% off coupon that was just good for Jan 5/6, so I stopped today to look for a few books that are on my long term list, but the only one they had in stock was Barack Obama's "Dreams from my Father", a book I have had on my list for the last few years. Guess it is time to get a little better acquainted with our new President. Outside on the sidewalk Borders had about thirty-six feet of tables with books reduced to $3.99 - some really good books, but I need to restrain myself from filling up my bookcases again after I have just reduced their load. So, I only bought these four - all but one by authors I have read before. Don't know about "Gap Creek" by Robert Morgan, but, hey, at $3.99 for a trade paperback I can just pass it on to someone else if I don't like it. Or take it in a box of discards to The Bookman who gives half the value in credit to be applied to secondhand books in his store. What a deal!

With 40% off my Obama book was about $15.75. Unlike the custom boxed signed set of Obama's first two books listed on ABE for US$250K! And then there is the signed 1st edition of Gone With the Wind offered for US$14633.65. I don't suppose anyone will ever actually read those particular copies of the books, especially when they can buy a used copy for US$1.00!

http://www.abebooks.com/

In Touch 01-05-09

One of the things that I had not considered when I started this blog was the comments that people would send back to me. They are so very encouraging and I appreciate each and every one. As most of you probably know there are different services that can give statistics on who has visited a website or blog. They don't tell you "who" or exactly "where". They list a city and a country and keep track of how often that reader has check in on a blog/website. Except AOL - only the ISP is given and it could be anywhere that AOL has members. Some readers, especially some of the "AOLers" have checked this blog hundreds of times. I wish I knew who and where you are. So, if you would feel comfortable, why don't you send me an e-mail and let me know something about yourself. My e-address is in my profile.

I would truly enjoy hearing from any of you, AOL or not. Just make a comment or send an e-mail. I will try to get off a reply in a timely manner.

I hope you will pass the info about the Sunday posting of a TCQC quilt along to your friends and groups you belong to, so they can also enjoy the quilts I have collected so far.

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Extra post about photos 01-05-09

I just came across this URL for all the photos that appeared on the back page of the LA Times Travel Section during the 52 weeks of 2008. They were taken by amateur photographers and these were selected from thousands of entries. Some amazing shots by very young travelers.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw-yourscene-pg,0,3269987.photogallery?52

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Quilt from TCQC 01-04-09

"Order and Chaos" Sherry Boram 2003 16.5W X 23.5L

Shown as part of QuiltArt@10 exhibit at Houston 2005

This is a quilt I purchased from the "My World in Black and White", but a few years after the exhibit. I liked it when it was hanging in the exhibit and kept coming across it on my photo files. Finally, I contacted Sherry and asked if it was still available. "Yes," she said. "The check is in the mail," I replied. I think the tale of how she made this quilt enhanced my interest. Sherry and her husband are 'snowbirds', their home is in Indiana, but they also spend winters in Arizona and and summers in the Blue Ridge area of SW Virginia. She was in Virginia when she decided to make this quilt for the exhibit and she had very few supplies. She did have white PFD fabric and black Setacolor, so she painted, wet on wet, in stripes on the fabric She went shopping at a local store to find embellishments - the shining squares were cut from holographic school folders and beads came from a bracelet. The top third is quilted with vertical and horizontal lines, very close together with the tiniest black matte beads between vertical lines across the top. These are followed by five sets of three fat black beads sewn vertically and then five squares cut from the notebook cover and bound in black cotton. The bottom two thirds of the piece are quilted in vertical waves of stitching and then embellished with lovely square beads in several colors, decreasing in number toward the bottom. She says, "..the top is orderly, the bottom less so. This relates to the chronology of my entire life as well as how my daily life goes. Order is necessary, but Chaos is sometimes a lot more fun."
Sherry has excellent technical skills and her 'artists' eye has divided the space well. It is quite a nice quilt and I am proud to have it in the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection.

Darkness comes early 01-03-09

When went out for a walk on Friday I discovered that 4:15 was too late to take pictures without a flash. Although Thursday was gorgeous, it has been dreary and drizzly since. I walked around the house to check the drains because we were having sprinkles - I don't do it often enough, going in/out through the garage or front door or the slider onto the patio. At any rate, I discovered that my paper whites are at least twice as tall as they usually are at the first of the year. I guess it is the very warm weather we have had this past fall and the four and a half inches of rain in the last month - which is more than we sometimes have in a year. No blossoms yet and only a few buds. I need to get out and prune my roses - it has to be done before the end of January. One more thing on the endless list!

This is Sunday already, so tonight I will post another TCQC quilt.