Stateside: A Postcard and Flowers for Mothers Day

I have only a cheap internet camera so these pix aren’t all that good, but hopefully you’ll get some idea of how the recent months of rain and the subsequent warm, sunny weather of the last two weeks have brought out the best in the Bay Area.

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This view is looking west from Merritt College in the Oakland Hills over to the other side of the Bay of San Francisco, across the Oakland international airport to around about where SF international airport is in the far, far distance.

Herb Caen, the legendary, acerbic SF columnist, once wrote that what he hated about spring here was the “green scum” that covered the hills. In a month or two, these hills will revert to their summery golden state, origin of California’s reputation as the Golden State.

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Merritt College is a community college and provides pretty much the equivalent education you’d get at a polytech in NZ. It has a highly respected landscape architecture and gardening department and these flowers caught my eye at their recent fund-raising spring plant sale.

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Garden stores have huge stocks of roses in bloom at the moment. I failed to capture the unusual caramel-coloured rose I saw at one, but here’s a pretty Mothers Day variety, looking healthy and pink and pretty.

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I’m not really a gardener, but my neighhour is and the rose bushes along our fence have just gone crazy in the past two weeks with the hot weather. This photo doesn’t do the plethora justice, but I hope you get the idea. (Damn, is that a battalion of aphids on that leaf or a digital artifact?)

I hope you had a grand Mothers Day!

ENDS

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