Sunday, December 24, 2006

A day in the park

Yesterday, to continue our vacation fun, we decided to spend some time outside and visited the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden. This is just a few miles from where we live and a good place for a hike.

Now you might ask, a garden? In December? But yes... this is LA remember.

Just to show how true this is, this lovely spectacle greeted us just as we entered the gardens. This is the bloom off a succulent that is about a foot tall at best.




I'm a bit over 5 foot which puts this bloom at about 10 foot tall. Impressive stuff.



Later in our walk, I had to take a picture of this pine cone. Look at those curly points!



Our next stop was our favorite thing in the park... a giant coastal oak. This tree is huge! If S seems dwarfed here, it's because he was. We love to sit on the bench and just rest here.



This picture unfortunately does not really capture the beauty of this California native. It's called manzanita and the bark is a very smooth, deep red color. It's architecture is just beautiful.



As we left the park, we noticed these strange creatures as well. They were set up in their Christmas display, and although they are cacti, looked strangely like Christmas trees.

Of course, lest you fear that I have not spent any time with my needles, I did finish knitting up the body of my booga bag. I have a bit more to go on the handles and then felting will commence!

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