Our Home: Christmas 2008

Now that Veneta spent four-and-a-half hours working on my dinosaur of a laptop to get it back online, I can now post photos to my blog! And just in time to post Christmas photos, too. Perfect!


Keith's dad with eight of his fifteen grandchildren on Christmas Eve (J was sick in bed)


Our tree on Christmas morning


Our dining/school area, decorated for Christmas


Our fireplace burning on Christmas morning


All five Advent candles lit on Christmas Eve

Christmas Morning 2008

B opens his Legos

B after unloading his stocking

J and T open a mutual gift or two

E opens her new flannel PJ's

Keith and Dash watch the present-opening on Christmas morning

Summers Past Farms in Autumn

One of my very favourite places in all of San Diego is Summers Past Farms in Flinn Springs, east of El Cajon and west of Alpine. I can see its red barn gift shop and extendive gardens from the freeway as I drive up and down the mountain. I spend a lot of time there each spring, but this week I stopped by in autumn and revelled in the still-blooming gardens and the sweet pumpkin patch, taking over 100 photos as I do every time I stop by with my camera. I also made my way into the barn that serves as a gift shop where I purchased my friend Judith's birthday gift. In fact, I buy a great many special birthday gifts at Summers Past Farms.

But it's the gardens that fill my soul with joy and dream about creating in my own yard. After a chat with the owner, I purchased their special sweet pea seeds and will plant them with a prayer as our mountain frosts will cause a great challenge to early spring flowers that are cold-sensitive. Also with her advice, I'll try some morning glories next spring as well. I was hard pressed to pass by the gorgeous pansies (see bottom photo) in the small nursery without taking them home for my own garden. B was obviously with me and allowed me to shoot a photo or two of him as he ran circles around the gardens and across the huge lawn to the pumpkin patch. I stopped at the top of the Japanese bridge and looked over the shaded gardens.

I wanted to sit in the gardens with good friends, sipping their mango teas or special coffees OR purchasing plants in the nursery, OR buying just about EVERYTHING in the gift and soap shops, OR just curling up under a tree or in the herb garden to write and sketch. OR do as I did: take 100 photos of the beautiful gardens. Summers Past is a gem in the East County, and it's a special place of serenity and creativity for me.

Late Summer in the Mountains

I love watching summer turning to fall. The crisp bite to the air. The apples ripening on the tree. The night temps dropping into the forties. The leaves changing colors, falling, gathering on the lawn. The long shadows the clouds make on the mountains surrounding our village. Summer, my least favorite season, is fading, and fall and winter are on the way. Cosy fires in the woodburning stove. Curling up to read with a steaming cup of British tea. Lighting candles to dispel the cold and darkness, watching the flames flicker and twirl. Wrapping myself in my favorite moss-green velour throw. Sleeping in a cold room while snuggled into flannel sheets under the welcome weight of blankets and quilts. The joy of snowflakes falling on my face and watching the kids and dog play in the snow, stamping their feet on the front porch.

It's all on the way, and even a hot day like today promises all the welcome things I love about autumn and winter.

At Cardiff-by-the-Sea

Several friends and myself accompanied Kitty to Cardiff-by-the-Sea to celebrate her 50th birthday. The birthday photos are in an album on Facebook, but I really liked these beach photos I took while there. I've never been to North County beaches, and I really liked this one, rather different from the southern beaches our family usually enjoy.

Thunderheads

One element of San Diego County weather in late July and most of August is the piling up of clouds upon clouds in the eastern skies. San Diego County is a bit of an oddity weather-wise as within 50 miles the elevation goes from sea level up to mesas, down into inland valleys, then out to mountains of 6,000 feet elevation. On the backside of the mountains, the elevations drops again to an elevation of 500 feet across the California desert to the Arizona border. But as moist air from the Arizona summer monsoons twirls over the desert and then up over the mountains, the resulting thunderheads can be seen across the entire county.

E. took these photos from inside my little '91 Toyota as we climbed up and up in elevation, nearing the 4000 feet of elevation in which our small town resides. The clouds often deluge the small mountain towns in summertime, sometimes extending even into the inland valleys, but despite amazing clouds that look so promising of rain, we've had very little precipitation this summer, and no downpours at all. Our town is brittle-dry, unfortunately ready to spark into the terrifying fires that endanger our area each September and October when the Santa Ana winds sweep westward across the county, bringing air so dry that humidity drops to single digits.

So we continue to pray that gorgeous clouds such as these will dump buckets o' rain on us very soon to prevent our town from being quite the tinderbox it is at present.

Friday Beach Day

We spent Friday afternoon at the beach, Law Street Beach in Pacific Beach, to be exact. The fun came when the boys discovered quite a large crab tangled up in some string.

A nearby dad came to the rescue, helping to patiently unsnarl the thin but strong string while T held the crab.


At last the crab was free, and T held him up for all the little kids gathered around to see before letting it go back in the surf. After a few waves washed over him, he scuttled away to deeper water, the watching children shrieking with a mixture of fright and excitement. It was quite a little adventure, and certainly the first time in all my life at the beach to see a crab a third that large!


The beach was so very crowded that a Friday felt at least like a weekend, if not a major summer holiday. We barely found a place to squeeze in our beach chairs and blanket. The ocean warmed up to the warmest temperature of the summer, 72 degrees, and despite the roughness of the waves that had dragged huge mounds of seaweed to shore, the boys could scarcely "boogie" board because of the sheer number of people in the water. But a day at the beach is always a treat, and it's so convenient with my parents living just half a block from Law Street Beach.

By Any Other Name....

Roses are blooming in my garden which looks much improved after a visit from the Lake Murray Youth Group who spent all Tuesday morning up here, weeding and deadheading and cleaning out my very messy laundry room. I love this rose, with its speckled effect of yellow and peach. It rocks.

Boys!

I came out this morning and found all three boys oblivious to me and very involved in their game. I don't quite understand why all three boys were playing a racing game on the X-box upside-down, but at least they are sharing without arguing, right?

Poor Dash looks as bemused as I feel. I can see his little doggie brain thinking, "What ARE they doing????"

Cloudy Days of Summer

Our mountain weather has been unusually humid lately, with clouds passing overhead during most of each day. The clouds have brought blessed relief from the 105+ degree weather; I can handle weather under a hundred without much trouble. But this is HUMID heat, not the dry heat to which we mountain dwellers in San Diego County are accustomed. Two-and-a-half minutes in the sun watering my garden means that I get to experience makeup sliding down my forehead and stinging my eyes. Joy. But I suppose I'll take the muggy high 80's, low 90's over the dry 107 degrees of early July. And I guess I'll take the clouds, too....

Family

On Saturday evening, we descended the hill to Keith's sister's place to celebrate the safe return home of her youngest, Steven, who just spent six months in Baghdad. Today Steven returned to Hawaii, his original deployment before he volunteered for six months in the Middle East. In the photo above are Keith's dad and nine of the fifteen grandkids present. (E was in Phoenix, spending the week with the three female Arizona cousins -- she needed "girl time" with three brothers.)



Three generations of Barrett men: Keith's dad Ken; Steven, Keith's nephew, and Keith's younger brother, Kevin.

California Tower, Balboa Park

The California Tower in Balboa Park is perhaps, besides the Pacific Ocean itself, the best-known landmark in San Diego. Almost all air flights pass by this beautiful tower, built for the Exposition in 1916. Family tradition states that my great-great grandfather help to design it; however, in my genealogical research, I have yet to corroborate that fact. But it's still a gorgeous landmark that now houses the Museum of Man right next to the magnificent Laurel Street Bridge that separates Balboa Park from downtown San Diego itself. I took this shot from the Skyfari in the San Diego Zoo -- a unique perspective that the boys and I very much enjoyed on our trip to the Zoo this week. See further photos from our Tuesday trip below.

Another Zoo Trip

After T's early orthodonic appointment Tuesday, we decided to not waste our gas for a ten-minute check up and to proceed on to Balboa Park. When we realized that the only free museums this Tuesday were ones we weren't interested in, we decided on a short trip to the San Diego Zoo. On our last two trips, the Zoo happened to be quite crowded, but this morning the Zoo was quite sparsely peopled. Finally, we had a clear shot at the Reptile House before making quick visits to the meerkats and otters in the Children's Zoo. T took the first three shots; I took the final one. Enjoy!


Iguana in the Reptile House


Desert Tortoise in the Reptile House


River Otter under water -- not easy to catch these guys in motion as they move FAST!


B sitting in the window welcoming a River Otter moving his way.

San Diego Zoo

With my sister and her family from Montana in town, we've made the rounds of the San Diego landmarks this week: Julian, the beach, the San Diego Zoo. It's rather tiring doing them all within a couple of days, but it's also been fun as well. T took the otter and meerkat photos as they are his favorite animals (and because E doesn't share the kids' camera well).

Beach...

We walked up the beach from Pacific Beach toward La Jolla, looking at the cliffs and watching the kids search for shells and rocks. It was an overcast day just along the coast, definitely not the most beautiful day for photography but it was the day we were there. The cliffs were especially intriguing; I loved the colors and the stripes of the layers. My brother went up to the cliff and examined the stripes: they are made up of a multitude of small clear crystals in the rock.

Julian and Cuyamaca

This area in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park is part of our "old stomping grounds" from our childhood. Almost every summer we stayed at the horse camp (destroyed by fire in 2003) and would walk up to the mine where I took these photos at sunset, watching for deer coming out to feed at dusk. Or we would ride our horses up through the mine on our way to ride around Lake Cuyamaca. We also used to climb Stonewall Peak (top photos) on every trip: two miles to the summit and two miles down of narrow pathways. Most of this area burned five years ago in the Cedar Fire of 2003, and the evidence of the fire is everywhere. We miss our camping trips to Los Caballos Horse Camp -- my mom camped there as a child, and my brother, sister and I camped there almost every summer, and even my own kids have camped there when they were very young.

Sweet Sixteen

E asked me to take a new portrait photo of her as she's starting a semi-private blog (only those who have been invited can read it -- just close friends and family) and wanted a new photo. This was taken in front of our apple tree, and she looks quite fresh depsite the 106 degree heat.

Yesterday at the Heritage graduation (see Meditative Meaderings for the post), I realized more than ever that my girl only has two more years here at home in high school before she graduates and starts college. Two years. Such a short time.

Spring Flowers at Summers Past Farms

I took these in mid-May at Summers Past Farms, and I simply haven't had time to edit the 150 photos I took there. Some are good, but these are the best, besides the sunflower photos I posted right after my trip to Summers Past. I love this place -- wonderful for photography, artwork, writing, visiting with friends over coffee, and, of course, shopping in the two gift shops and the small plant nursery. And the maze, whether covered with sweetpeas in the spring or morning glories in the summer, is always a miraculous place.

Fathers' Day on the Mountain

We spent Fathers' Day (and our anniversary) at my parents' little cabin atop Mount Laguna. For the events of the day and for a couple more photos, click here.



The cabin's chimney....



Fallen logs near the cabin....



Wildflowers each the size of my thumbnail....