shimmering day

beautiful day in point reyes station and at tomales point. we saw about 60 tule elk throughout the hike and drive. 

more from pierce point ranch 

marilyn made a dance video from the footage at pierce point ranch, in the milking barn and around. 

 

back to Vallejo

it's good to be home after a wonderful trip. even our dwarf peach tree (not pictured) is fruiting in its first year. although currently it's dusted (as is everything) with ash from the fires to the north. 

the cats survived our absence without getting into any scrapes with neighbor cats and without our total spoiling of them. (with us they are on a 10 small meals a day diet, while most people do a 2 times a day thing. :-))  ^^ ^^
 

 

more spring

we went to mount diablo two weekends in a row because it was so glorious, and neither of us had been in many many years. we didn't realize what we had been missing! it was bursting with spring—birds, bees, butterflies, all manner of insects, wildflowers.

see more butterflies and flowers from mount diablo

back yard beauty

in love with our back yard

delicious scented bloom (rosemary behind)
baby fig tree (cute!)
mint and spring yard spurt
papi rolling in favas

also, check out our rose bush, popping like last year (with a crazy lil kitty rascal on the pole behind the roses)

and lil kitty looking adorable. 

back yard blooms

heavenly lushness right now. swarming bees, scents drifting, flowering flowering flowering. the cats and we have it good. 

lil kitty rascal hung out up high today (like 20+ feet up) on an old trellis, batting the new roses and walking around like a (clumsy) tightrope queen. good thing she's light and flexible and tends to land on her feet!

feeling spring

feeling our back yard. 
everything is blooming, reaching, opening. peach blossoms, lemon blossoms, mint, favas, fig! mystery bush that is aromatherapy to stand under. so fragrant. so is the yesterday-today-tomorrow plant. delicious season of dreams.

butterflies, a bee, flowers

 flora and fauna at home

fall at home

honeycomb 
honey cat (18.5 years and skinny, but still goin')

East Coast adventures

to Philadelphia (hot and humid!), Bryn Mawr, Gladwyn, and NY

whole set

topanga canyon

canyon airstreams 
canyon flora

we traveled to the much storied topanga canyon this weekend. a friend of m's got hitched in a handfasting ceremony led by a shaman. the loves stood on the edge of the canyon and told each other poems they'd written and sang to each other. we all tied ribbons of different colors around their wrists. all connected. rather lovely.

m and i took a hike. the canyon's flowers are different than the bay's (obviously). somehow that was so refreshing. a new landscape—similar, yet different. blooming and slithering with lizards. hazy with dusk. and then just minutes to the beach, foggy in the morning. grey with bolts of pink shirts and yellow surfboards. sand underfoot and waves eternal. 

the photos to prove it. 

yard views

spring 5: blooms!

our rose bush is bonkers.

spring 4

more spring growth: 
first lemon on our little tree
leaves of our very tall rose

chants by my sweetie. she just started making (almost daily) these beautiful, soothing, short chants she calls sound sketches. 

 

spring 3

spring duet 3

spring is my favorite. posting more below and soon above, too. 

spring 2

spring duet 2 in SF and Port Costa

hello again | spring 1

 spring duet 1

trumpet!

from the yard

north beach date

m and i did some touristing in our former home city of SF: buildings, food, views, and the (heretofore not visited by either of us) enchanted gardens of telegraph hill.
more

north beach has always felt like a foreign place to me, a destination (even when i lived in SF). m and i remarked on how in the many years we lived there, no friends of ours ever lived in north beach. i did temp occasionally, in 1998 or 1999, as a teller at a bank in north beach. the chinese folks would line up for the chinese-speaking teller and the italians for the italian speaking teller. i guess i served the people who spoke english and/or who didn't mind my lack of other useful languages (there not being many swedes in north beach). on lunch breaks i went to the italian deli next door for seriously delicious sandwiches made by seriously italian men. i rode the increasingly packed bus through chinatown to downtown to go home, north of the panhandle. the whole thing was a fun intro to SF.

outside | inside

park life

dreamy SF day at the de young (mainly in the garden) and in the castro. 

feelin' lucky. 

here's a delicious flower near my work.