On this day...

I was looking back through some old pics and thought it might be fun to do some On This Day posts.

In 2006, I was about to leave the job that had worn me down over 8.5 years. My seventh boss in that time was my undoing. Couldn't hack breaking in yet another boss.



For me, these pics are fairly prosaic but for others? Probably exotic.



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In 2007, we had been in Colorado for hmm 10 days. We went for a drive up the Poudre Canyon. I was still struggling to drive on the correct side of the road... LOL





It totally blew us away.


I so want to grow one of these - Colorado's state flower, a white and blue-mauve columbine.

More pics here.

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2008? We stayed home. But we still saw some nifty stuff around this day, like Ainsley House:

(OK, I cheated, that was taken on 3rd July 2008, but then I used 4th of July photos in the 2006.)

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2009... The trip to Yellowstone.


Ol' Faithful (the second one we saw in the US ;-)



But my faves are still the pics we took at the Grand Tetons on the 30th of June and the 1st of July.




(That is my desktop pic :-)



A few more pics here. I should edit the rest of the good ones cos believe it or not, there are many more where these came from. Only problem is I am not terribly discriminating.

Enjoy!

Bunnies and bonnets

Our local council, Campbell City Council, holds a Bunnies and Bonnets parade every year. We just so happened to be in downtown Campbell and saw a bit of the fun.


There were marching bands (local high school, pic chosen to not show faces!).


Floats.


People on weird recumbent advertising bikes, including this Easter Bunny who had one of the ugliest, scariest faces I've ever seen on something that is meant to be happy and jolly.

Girls dressed in Scottish outfits dancing (have a video but again it is of kids and there seems to be some prohibition against showing kids on blogs without permission of their parents/guardians). Local pollies in porsches. Dancing girls, not doing gaelic jigs. People just wandering along. Old cars.

Americans seem to enjoy parades a lot. We don't have many in Oz. I think they are thought to be dicky and old-fashioned.

Near the end, before the fire trucks, etc, there was a pipe band! I videoed them :-)



Enjoy!

Uewesual and noice

We've had some quite cold, for the Bay area, weather recently. Mebbe not as unusually cold as further south, but cooler than expected. Maximums have been reaching 9C, mins down to freezing. The frosts have knocked around my baby basil but given they haven't done anything for two months, I am not fussed. The cold hasn't knocked the tomatoes on the head yet - I have flowers still and some baby tomatoes are growing slowly. Stupid things. I should just pull them out cos I want the pots for winter veg.

The other day, we saw this on the hills around San Jose




(Do you like how I got the light rail bridge in there for my FiL? :-)



Yep, that'd be snow. By the time I remembered to get out and take pics, it had melted off quite a bit. I am told there was snow on the Cupertino hills, just a sprinkling and it looked really pretty.

There are a lot of Chinese Pistachios (Pistache chinensis) planted in our area. They like them as street trees. Not totally sure why - they have pretty leaves and pretty autumn colours and pretty bobbles

but they make a helluva mess on the ground. Of course it mainly affects the bike riders and pedestrians, and bike riders and pedestrians are third class citizens. The trees are prettier than the local sycamore (plane tree) but plane trees don't drop as much crud, just leaves and the odd branch.

I'll be able to torture you with more pics now that we have our hard disks sorted. We had a heap of pics on an old machine and it is playing up badly, but now the disk is in a current machine and I access more pics from last year and four months of this year. Hooray!


I was all ready to go for a good bike ride on the day I took the snow pics (Wednesday, I think), but the wind was sooooo cold that my ears threatened to fall off. It is hard to ride when your ears are killing you (mental pic of ears reaching around and throttling one). I am knitting a head band but I've got more than one thing to knit so it is taking a while.

Tuesday sky

Goodness me! Long time no blog here....

Yesterday and today there were some weird phenomena in the sky.

I give you






Campbell Avenue


Looking up outside our front door


Los Gatos Creek without the creek


Albizia with sky wrongness.

!!!! White fluffy things in the sky! Not the usual morning fog, but white fluffy things. How unusual! I can hardly remember their names.


They became solid things yesterday and what a sunset followed! (Must download the pics to bore you with.)

All pics bar the one with the albizia are from within 10 minutes walk from my place.

Heh. I'll leave you with a pic that I ran through the "auto-enhance" filter on the Gimp.


Looks a little scary, eh?

A most curious hedge

Goodness. it is ages since I last posted here!

Anyway, expect some posts on spring! Lots of spring pictures coming your way, but just to make those in the north of the northern hemisphere jealous, have a look at this hedge!



Yep, there are oranges and what I suspect are grapefruit sticking out of that hedge!



All of Silly Valley area used to be orchards apparently and grows citrus very well indeed. There are lots of orange and lemon trees around, but none are as special as this hedge in Campbell!