California Photos

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Walking down the trail

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Walks, paths and trails

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This week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge theme is indoor and outdoors walks – anything designed for walking. All my photos are of the outdoors because that’s where I like to be best.

Once you take a trail at the back of Dos Picos County Park and pass the enchanted stone steps I showcased last week, you find yourself walking on a path bordered with many Ramona lilacs. If you hike in the spring, when the lilacs are in bloom, this is what you get to see as you follow the trail:

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Trail in Dos Picos County Park — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trail in Dos Picos County Park

And it only gets better as you walk along. Here’s a blast of green, purple and bright blue! I know, I still owe you a few close-ups of the Ramona lilacs, but at least you can see what the lilac trees look like full size. Aren’t they pretty?

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Trail bordered by Ramona lilacs — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trail bordered by Ramona lilacs

Another favorite spot where we enjoy hiking in Louis Stelzer County Park. On the day I took the photos below, the sky was completely gray but everything on the ground looked very green. In a couple of months, most of it will turn to yellow or brown, and the green probably won’t return until next January.

Here’s the trail that follows the side of the hill. This trail is fun to walk on a cloudy day, but I avoid it like the plague in the heat of summer since there’s no shade.

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Trail at Louis Stelzer County Park — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trail at Louis Stelzer County Park

Fortunately, this park offers a lot of wooded areas by the small creek. This is a great trail to walk on any day of the year. This is as green as it gets in San Diego.

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Green trail at Louis Stelzer County Park — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Green trail at Louis Stelzer County Park

Like many parks in San Diego County, this park is full of coast live oak trees, which tend to feature many thick, often contorted branches. Look how this large tree branch curves over the trail to create an arch.

Cee's Fun Foto Challenge: Trail with coast live oak trees — Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Trail with coast live oak trees

To me, there’s nothing more pleasant than walking down a shaded trail to make me feel in unison with nature. What about you?

April 24, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: California Photos, Landscape Photos, Photography, Photos of San Diego, Plant Photos, Tree PhotosTags: blooms, California pictures, Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, coast live oak tree, Dos Picos County Park, hiking trails San Diego, lilac blooms, Louis Stelzer County Park, nature photography, photography, photos, photos of blooms, ramona lilac, walking trails San Diego 10 Comments

Macro Monday: Tiny bugs in small purple wildflowers

Macro Monday: Bugs hiding in flowers

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Today I’m taking part in Macro Monday at Lisa’s Chaos. Remember you can click on each image to see it in a larger format.

While recently hiking at a local county park in San Diego, I found these tiny purple wildflowers bordering the trail on the hillside.

Each cluster of these purple flowers was no bigger than the size of my thumbprint.

After photographing the first two clusters, I thought I had enough, until I found the next set of wildflowers and saw several tiny bugs keeping busy inside the flowers. I felt I had been transported into Miniature Land for a minute.

April 22, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Animal Photos, Bloom Photos, California Photos, Flower Photos, PhotographyTags: bugs in wildflowers, California pictures, california wildflowers, Macro Monday, nature photography, photography, photos, photos of blooms, photos of flowers, small purple wildflowers, tiny purple wildflowers 4 Comments

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up

I’m participating in the WordPress weekly photo challenge and this week’s theme is up. You can notice quite a lot when you look up, and here are just a few things I captured on camera. Remember you can click on each photo for a larger view.

A dog in the sky

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up – Clouds in the shape of a dog

A red-tailed hawk in a sycamore tree

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up – Red-tailed hawk in a tree

The moon rising in the broad daylight of the afternoon

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up - Moon rising during the day — WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up – Moon rising during the day

The highest mountain peak around

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up – the mountains of Idyllwild, California

The many branches of a tall pine tree

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up - Looking up a pine tree — WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up – Looking up a pine tree

Or the sun shining through the poplar leaves in the fall

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up - Yellow poplar leaves in the fall — WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up – Yellow poplar leaves in the fall

What’s up?

April 19, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Animal Photos, Bird photos, California Photos, Forest Photos, Landscape Photos, Photography, Sky Photos, Tree PhotosTags: cloud shaped like a dog, cloud shapes, daylight moon, dog cloud, idyllwild california, moon rising in daylight, nature photography, photography, photos, photos of trees, pine tree branches, poplar tree leaves, red tailed hawk, Wordpress weekly photo challenge, WordPress weekly photo challenge: Up, yellow poplar leaves 22 Comments

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Focus - Orange protea pincushion flower

The colors of spring: orange protea pincushion and purple lavender

In today’s post, I’m featuring one of my favorite flowers: the protea pincushion flower. Originally from South Africa, they seem to like San Diego’s weather and they’re easy to spot in people’s yards and public places. What do I like most about them? They have some of the most cool looking shapes of petals I’ve ever seen.

I wanted to capture this peculiar curved shape of the petals by taking a close-up of this orange protea pincushion. You can click on this photo for a larger view.

After taking this photo, I noticed the large lavender flowers and decided to use them as the background for my photo, along with the blue sky.

Orange protea pincushion and purple lavender

For this last picture, I decided to change the depth of field so I could focus on the lavender blooms instead. I also changed my angle to avoid them hiding behind the protea pincushion.

So here you go, same flowers, three different angles and perspectives. Some people go bungee jumping, I play with my camera settings.

April 18, 2013February 7, 2020 by Milka Pejovic Categories: Bloom Photos, California Photos, Flower Photos, PhotographyTags: lavender blooms, lavender flowers, nature photography, orange protea pincushion, photography, photos, photos of blooms, photos of flowers, protea pincushion flower, purple lavender 2 Comments

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Steps or stairs

This week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge theme is steps or stairs. I only have one photo to share for this theme, but when I saw these beautiful steps a couple of weeks ago, I knew they deserved their own photo post.

I found these amazing stone steps at Dos Picos County Park in Ramona, California, while hiking on a trail at the back of the park. In the spring, Dos Picos Park is simply beautiful. The grass that grows there is quite particular. It’s very fine, very tall, very soft, and very… green! Believe me, living in San Diego, you don’t get to see grass this green very often.

Between the many coast live oaks, the blooming lilacs (you can see photos of those lilacs here and here), and greener than green grass, sometimes I feel like I’ve stepped into some type of fairyland. And that’s why I think these stone steps fit perfectly with the fairyland theme. What do you think?