WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home

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Sometimes I find it hard to believe that San Diego has been my home for a little over 15 years now. In a way, it feels like it wasn’t that long ago when I drove cross country from Connecticut to California. San Diego has grown on me as my new home over the years. Besides the worrisome wildfires, random earthquakes, and lack of greenery, there’s a lot to like about San Diego and its surroundings. San Diego is my home and here are a few things I enjoy about it. Remember you can click on each image to enjoy a larger view. San Diego is home to the big waves of the Pacific Ocean under a bright blue sky.

Beautiful waves at Coronado Beach, San Diego, California
Beautiful waves at Coronado Beach, San Diego, California

San Diego is home to a large agricultural community, including a lot of citrus (lemons and oranges, mostly).

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - oranges in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – oranges in San Diego

San Diego is home to not just one single season year round, but also Fall and its bold colors.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - changing seasons in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – changing seasons in San Diego

San Diego can even be home to frost in the winter, especially inland. This is as much cold as I can take!

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - frost in winter in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – frost in winter in San Diego

San Diego is home to beautiful sunrises, especially in the winter.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - beautiful sunrise in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – beautiful sunrise in San Diego

San Diego is also home to beautiful sunsets. This one is from Christmas evening 2012.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - beautiful sunset in San Diego
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – beautiful sunset in San Diego

San Diego is home to hundreds, probably thousands of different species of animals and plants. It’s also home to the most amazing topiary I’ve ever seen (view more topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden here).

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - amazing topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – amazing topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden

And as of this week, San Diego is home to some beautiful pear blossoms in Balboa Park. You can view more photos of these pear blossoms in a post next week, so I invite you subscribe to this site if you haven’t already.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Home - pear blossoms at San Diego's Balboa Park
WordPress weekly photo challenge: Home – pear blossoms at San Diego’s Balboa Park

I’m happy to call San Diego home.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

This week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge theme is earth. At first, I thought I’d skip this photo challenge theme because I couldn’t think of any photos to use. Then I read Cee’s description of earth and I figured, hey I could do that! Earth: Clay, Rock, Dust, Sand, Mud, Crystal, Powder, Shadow, Space, Darkness, Gravity, Bone, Silicon.

Below is my personal take of this theme. Remember you can click on any photo to view a larger image.

Southern California is covered with dirt and rocks, not much green overall. Cactus, succulents and short bushes like California Sage Brush are what grow best here.

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Earth - succulents growing in dirt and rocks
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth – succulents growing in dirt and rocks

I enjoy painted rocks and these rocks from the San Diego Botanic Garden are a cute and subtle way to ask people to stay away.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth - painted rocks
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth – painted rocks

Of course San Diego is not all dirt and rocks. It also features beautiful beaches, my favorite being Coronado Beach. It is always listed as one of the Top 10 beaches in the U.S. and it deserves it.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth - San Diego sandy beach
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth – San Diego sandy beach

My last photo is from Idyllwild, California. I call it the face in the rock, and it’s pretty obvious why. This is as if Earth was watching us as we walk by.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth - the face in the rock
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Earth – the face in the rock

Busy bees on cactus flowers

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

A few days ago, I shared with you some photos of flowers I took recently. Today I’d like to share a few more photos I took that day, more specifically the ones with the busy bees on the yellow cactus flowers.

Remember you can click on each photo for a larger view. This is the photo I shared the other day.

Bee on yellow cactus flowers
Bee on yellow cactus flowers

I love how the sunlight reflects on the bee’s wings to show its intricate design on the photo below.

Bee collecting nectar on yellow cactus flowers
Bee collecting nectar on yellow cactus flowers

I wonder how much nectar the bees can collect from these tiny flowers, which are just the size of a bee. At least the bees were busy doing their job and I didn’t seem to disturb them with my camera.

Bee on cactus flowers
Bee on cactus flowers

I got lucky for this last shot and managed to get two bees in the frame, a different angle for each. Busy bees!

Two bees on yellow cactus flowers
Two bees on yellow cactus flowers

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Unique – the topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

I was going to hold off showing you the amazing topiary I discovered at the San Diego Botanic Garden, but when I saw that the WordPress weekly photo challenge is “unique”, I figured these photos would be perfect. I had never seen anything like it anywhere else, so to me, these are very unique indeed.

First let me say I’ve seen lots of topiary and I always admire the art of being able to create shapes out of trees. In a way, what the San Diego Botanic Garden has done is a little different, as you’ll see below. The most amazing thing about these plant “sculptures” is that you could literally walk right past them and not notice them – they blend in with their surroundings very well. In fact, I walked past the first one, saw the second, then walked back to the first one to take pictures from the beginning. Most people didn’t notice most of them either until they saw me taking pictures of them.

I took these first few photos in the Mexican Garden area of the San Diego Botanic Garden. The light was very bright and most of the garden was in the shade, so it was tricky to take photos, with such contrast on most pictures. And I didn’t use a flash either. I need to plan half a day to go up there by myself and spend the time to take the right pictures, the right way, at the right time.

I invite you to click on some of these photos to see all the details of each topiary in a larger format.

This is the first topiary you see as you enter the Mexican Garden, that is if you don’t walk right by it as I did.

Unique topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden
Unique topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden

The second topiary is just as pretty. You can see each plant is exactly where it’s supposed to be.

Mexican lady topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden
Mexican lady topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden

The next two topiary items are opposite of each other. It’s a couple dancing to the music of a mariachi band.

Dancing couple topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden
Dancing couple topiary at the San Diego Botanic Garden

Check out the musicians’ mustaches!

Mariachi band topiary - San Diego Botanic Garden
Mariachi band topiary – San Diego Botanic Garden

I’m not sure what this topiary is supposed to be. A gardener? You tell me what you think it is.

Gardener topiary - San Diego Botanic Garden
Gardener topiary – San Diego Botanic Garden

The next topiary is a man sitting down and looking at something in his hand.

Man admiring nature topiary
Man admiring nature topiary

This is what he’s looking at: a butterfly (made with a plant, of course). Nice!

Topiary of a man looking at a butterfly
Topiary of a man looking at a butterfly

These last few photos are from topiary art I found in the children’s garden of the San Diego Botanic Garden.

This one is technically not a topiary but rather a sculpture made out of planting pots… Pretty neat, huh?

Sculpture out of planting pots
Sculpture out of planting pots

The next one is a poor rhinoceros topiary that has a shedding problem. It looks quite naked in some areas.

Rhinoceros topiary
Rhinoceros topiary

The last one is a reading rabbit, perfect addition to a children’s garden.

Reading rabbit topiary - San Diego Botanic Garden
Reading rabbit topiary – San Diego Botanic Garden

I hope you enjoyed these photos of unique topiary. Thanks for stopping by!

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers

Zazzle online shop If you enjoy my photos and would like to purchase some, I want to thank you! Simply visit my Zazzle online shop and browse the product offerings. If there’s a photo you would like to purchase but don’t see it in my shop, please contact me by using the Contact form at the bottom of my home page and let me know which photos you are interested in purchasing, and in what format / medium.

I’m participating in the online adventure travel and photography magazine LetsBeWild.com’s Wild Weekly Photo Challenge for bloggers. This week’s Challenge is: Flowers.

Yeah! Flowers are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I used quite a few photos of flowers in my 2013 12-month photo calendar, didn’t I?

Why do I love photographing flowers so much? First, they still mostly still, unlike my kids, so I can take my time and find the best angle to photograph them. Unless my kids are standing very impatiently by my side… Second, flowers come in tons of different colors. I love pink and purple (you’ll see one of my most favorite flowers below) but really, flowers look great in almost any color. Third, on top of their awesome colors, some flowers can even smell good. Ah, our world is such a wonderful place…

For this photo challenge on flowers, I’ll share a few photos I took during my most recent visit to the San Diego Botanic Garden. I have many more photos to share about this visit, including some of the most amazing topiary I’ve ever seen. So if you’d like to see them, make sure you subscribe to this blog (sign up in the left sidebar), or to my Facebook page.

It’s one thing to like flowers and take photos of them. It’s another to know the names of the flowers you photograph. Even when I visit the San Diego Botanic Garden, I manage to take photos of flowers that are not labeled, so several of the flowers below will remain nameless, unless you know their names and you’re kind enough to share in the Comments section.

Remember you can click on each photo for a larger view.

Here’s one of my most favorite flower in San Diego. It starts blooming in large patches in January, for about two months – a beautiful way to celebrate winter here. I believe this is called a Pink Aster. And it’s my favorite color too!

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers - Pink asters
Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers – Pink asters

What goes well with flowers? Bees! Here’s a bee on cactus flowers. Very cute, small, yellow flowers as you can see, smaller than a bee. Unfortunately I don’t know what type of cactus this is.

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers - Bee on cactus flowers
Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers – Bee on cactus flowers

Many types of cactus are blooming at this time of year, and aloe is no exception. The one in the front is called Red Aloe, the one in the back Gold Aloe. Don’t they look great?

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers - Red Aloe and Gold Aloe
Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers – Red Aloe and Gold Aloe

My last flower pick is some type of daisy. Unfortunately its petals are not in great shape but I really like the angle of this photo.

Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers - Yellow daisy
Let’s Be Wild Weekly Photo Challenge – Flowers – Yellow daisy

Stay tuned for a couple more posts on my visit to the San Diego Botanic Garden. I promise you won’t be disappointed, especially with the topiary I found throughout the garden.