The prompt today for Travel with Intent’s One Word Sunday is MATCHING.
Much as self wishes she could find something other than flowers to post to the various challenges, this pair of blooms on her All Dressed Up rose was just too much to resist.
One Word Sunday: Matching
July 3, 2022 at 2:00 pm (Links, Sundays, postaday)
Tags: summer, happiness, California, Garden, blogs, photo challenge, One Word Sunday
Flower of the Day: All Dressed Up Rose (Again)
July 3, 2022 at 12:10 am (Flowers, Links, postaday, Surprises)
Tags: backyard, California, Cee Neuner, Flower of the Day, Garden, photo challenge, Saturdays, summer
Today there are new blooms on her All Dressed Up rose. So pretty! Self is really glad she decided to move it from the front yard to the back — now she can gaze at it all day through the French doors, she doesn’t even have to step out of her house.
Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day Challenge.
Better Than It Needed to Be
June 30, 2022 at 10:14 pm (Books, Conversations, Recommended, Surprises)
Tags: California, dystopia, horror, novel, reading lists, science fiction series, summer, summer reading, suspense
Self has been reading Plague: A Gone Novel. She’s still less than a hundred pages in, but already she is grateful for the writing: when a book about southern California teen-agers trapped under an invisible dome and having to deal with urges and drinking and plague, not to mention insects that burrow inside them, turns out also to be well- written, she is all : Too much! First the Adrian Tchaikovsky space opera, then this! What are the odds? What has she done to deserve etc.?
The Gone books have two main protagonists: Sam and Caine. The two are twins who’ve been separated at birth: their single mother gave Caine up for adoption, but kept Sam. Caine, naturally, grows up to be a bad boy. Because of his malevolence, Caine has been exiled by the other kids to an island off Perdido Beach. He is accompanied in exile by a beautiful girl, Diana, who’s in love with him. On p. 70, Caine and Diana start making out and then they argue. Caine starts lifting boulders with his finger and flinging them around (so, magic powers!)
“Sometimes I hate you!” he yelled and with a flick of his wrist sent the boulder flying off the cliff and falling toward the water below.
“Just sometimes?” Diana raised one skeptical brow. “I hate you almost all the time.”
They glared at each other with a look that was hate but also something else, something so much more helpless than hatred.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge (CMMC): Last Week of June 2022
June 29, 2022 at 11:47 pm (Flowers, Links, postaday)
Tags: California, Cee Neuner, CMMC, Garden, photo challenge, porch, summer
The prompt for the last week of June 2022 is FLOWERS AND LEAVES.
Inspired by Cee’s close-up of a lotus flower, self tried doing some extreme close-ups of flowers around her garden. Here’s a scabiosa, it’s blooming on her front porch.
Flower of the Day (FOTD): All Dressed Up
June 27, 2022 at 3:38 pm (Flowers, Links, plans, postaday, Recommended, Surprises)
Tags: summer, California, Gardens, Cee Neuner, favorites, photo challenge, backyard, Flower of the Day
This year, self placed three large planters just in front of her French doors, and filled each with roses.
Her Chrysler Imperial rose went into bloom last week. Now it’s the turn of All Dressed Up.
Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day:
She’s never had roses this big and fat in her backyard. Location is all.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Flower of the Day (FOTD): Chrysler Imperial Rose
June 25, 2022 at 3:17 am (Flowers, Links, postaday, Recommended, Surprises, Weather)
Tags: summer, California, Fridays, Garden, Cee Neuner, backyard, Flower of the Day
Self’s newest rose is a Chrysler Imperial. She bought it in February from Home Depot. The following month she was gone, and she didn’t get home again until June. It had hardly grown. But a few days ago, it produced one enormous bloom. It’s past its first flush, and it’s been very hot here on the Peninsula, but the red is like nothing she’s seen before. She’s never seen an actual Chrysler Imperial, but if it’s red like this rose, well — !
Posting for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge (CFFC): Waterscapes
June 22, 2022 at 1:28 am (destinations, Family, Flowers, Links, Lists, Places, plans, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: blogs, California, Cee Neuner, CFFC, England, Filoli, Gardens, inspirations, northern California, Oxford, photo challenge
This week’s CFFC is: LANDSCAPES or WATERSCAPES.
Self has lately been thinking of adding a water feature to her garden (though, she is worried about Lucia falling in, so maybe not until she learns to swim). Here are examples from various gardens she has visited in the past month:
- The Glasshouses, Oxford University Botanic Garden
- Central Fountain, Oxford University Botanic Garden
- Central Courtyard, Christchurch, Oxford University
- Filoli Gardens, Woodside, California
Father’s Day 2022
June 19, 2022 at 10:38 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, destinations, Holidays, Lists, Movies, Recommended, Sundays, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: action movies, blockbusters, California, humor, indulgences, Menlo Park, mysteries, summer, summer movies, summer reading
Listening to Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine.
It is son’s FIRST FATHER’S DAY, WOO HOO! Where does the time go.
Jumbotron on Jefferson Avenue says: SEVERE DROUGHT. LIMIT WATERING TO TWO DAYS A WEEK.
This is why self does all her watering by hand. And only at 10 p.m.
This morning, she was at the 9:35 a.m. screening of Top Gun: Maverick at the local Century 20. There were lots of people. She got peeved when someone came in late and sat right next to her. She prefers to keep at least one empty seat between her and the next person. So she moved. We are still in a pandemic!
After the movie (Really great. What a good actor Miles Teller is. And Jennifer Connolly is fantastic and beautiful. How many people know that she was an undergrad at Stanford? She was a transfer from Yale), self drove to Menlo Park Library and checked out yet another Dr. Ruth Galloway mystery.
Went home, resumed reading The Chalk Pit, which might be her favorite of the entire series (14 books and counting). p. 267, Nelson interviews a local theater director in his flat. The same director who is staging an Alice in Wonderland play featuring an adult Alice tripped out on acid (The staging of this play is one of the biggest running gags in this book)
It is pushing midnight. A local woman’s gone missing. The woman just happens to be the partner of one of self’s favorite minor characters, DI David Clough.
“All the cast get on well. Cassie seems close to Adrian Linley, who plays the Caterpillar, her father in the play. Flora Frampton, who plays the Queen of Hearts, she mothers everybody, and Darrell Shaw . . . ” he pauses.
“Yes? What about Darrell Shaw?”
“He’s a young actor. Very talented. Plays the Gryphon, the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat. I just have a feeling that he has rather a crush on Cassie.”
“Does she have a crush back?”
“No.” Leo sounds quite shocked. “She seems blissfully happy with that oafish policeman partner.” He stops. “Oh, I’m sorry . . . “
Nelson hangs on to his stiff upper lip. LOL LOL LOL
Waiting in some excitement for the Juneteenth concert at the Hollywood Bowl to begin. CNN is carrying it live.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Whatsoever Is Lovely Challenge: Week 22, 2022
June 10, 2022 at 5:08 pm (destinations, Flowers, Links, Lists, Places, postaday)
Tags: backyard, blogs, California, Fridays, photo challenge, summer
Thanks to Xingfu Mama for hosting the Whatseover is Lovely Challenge.
As long-time blog readers know, self loves gardens. For this post, she spent a few moments in her backyard, taking pictures of what was blooming. It’s a gorgeous day!
Apologies, she forgot what those white flowrs are called! The rose is her Fourth of July, which throws off long sprays of red and white flowers, every summer without fail. The orange flower is abutilon.
Without further ado, the garden in June:
One Word Sunday: PLAIN
May 29, 2022 at 8:00 pm (Family, Links, postaday, Relatives, Sundays)
Tags: California, memories, One Word Sunday, photo challenge, Redwood City
Today’s post is a blast from the past: 20 years ago, son and his two cousins visiting from New York, looking out at San Francisco Bay and the urban sprawl from the hills behind Redwood City, off Farm Hill Boulevard.
Posting for Travel with Intent’s One Word Sunday Challenge.
Kanlaon 