TimeOut

New Year's Day Walking, Part 1

We set out this morning while things were very quiet (sleeping off last night's partying, I suspect). We tried to go to some neighborhoods we hadn't seen before, and found ourselves on a hill looking at the bay (ocean in the distance). So we walked there, then went down by the bay, then I needed some images of the clouds over the ocean, so we went there too. Thus I am breaking up our story into 3 parts. I hope this brightens the day of anyone who might stuck inside in a gray cloud of winter...

I know most of you might have seen this sunrise perspective from my kitchen, but we have some new neighbors who are talking about cutting down all their trees, so it might be the last time it looks like this. 🧐

This is a canyon across town a bit, in an area called Bay Park. It was "settled" about 75 years ago so most of the houses date from that era or have been upgraded since then. BTW San Diego is a city of "canyons" or "cañons" which are these valleys between high spots of land. Hence we have very few straight roads and no grid of streets that you can easily navigate.

For a more detailed tour of the park in this canyon, from a year or so ago, you can VISIT THIS POST

The foliage here is typical of our city in the winter. Some plants are bright green because this is their growing season. Others are brown. Rarely do we get bright colors. In the foreground right you will see some tumbleweeds, the kind that blow through the empty streets after the dying gunfighter is carted off to the cemetery in that wild west movie you've probably seen dozens of times.

It's not snow on the rosemary bush, but blossoms. My wife dresses for the worst weather we might (never) encounter, for her safety's sake.

There's dew on the ice plant today, not ice.

Some bamboo flowers caught our eye and then

led us to look out at the ocean which is pretty calm today, despite coastal flood warnings from the weather service.

Switching to macro mode now, as I am amazed at all the flowers we see up here.

Is that beautiful or what?

A different one, because it too is lovely.

Switching to a more prickly subject

and what I have always associated with Christmas -- citrus trees laden with fruit; oranges in this case. We lived in Lemon Grove, south of Orange County.

This is moving into succulent and cactus territory of the plant kingdom.

I'll throw in a few houses to give you a flavor of the 'hood. This is a new Calif / Spanish type grand residence which provided the flowers you just saw above.

Whereas across the street is a long, low, Adobe type house very similar to the one my father-in-law bought as soon as I got engaged to his daughter 50 years ago (so he didn't need so many bedrooms).

This one, well it has a rare tree that's threatening to drop all its brightly-colored leaves. But you would think by New Year's Day it would get on with the leaf dropping, wouldn't you? Nice white picket fence too (very rare here).