Water Gardens

Just say the words: Garden Tour and will I swoop up my car keys and head out to where ever the tour might be.
No one has to ask me twice to go!
The chance to go on a Water Garden and Pond Tour...well, that was a no brainer!
I rounded up hat friendly face girlfriend Karen and off we went last Saturday to see at least some of the 24 gardens on a self guided tour.
It was pretty warm...the hibiscus above wasn't really sweating but we sure were.

Thankfully just looking at water gardens, ponds and waterfalls is quite cooling at least mentally.

Plus the water lilies are just so beautiful this time of year.

I did notice one pond's frog was half in the shade himself.
(This garden was one that I had visited last year with Bernie privately; it was the garden of the people with three enormous land tortoises.)

I could have just stayed there the rest of the day but we pushed on...

The next garden had a Japanese theme.

 

It even had a raked sand garden about the size of a large couch with end tables.
The use of a dry stream bed to border it was great.  The three rocks in the sand are to represent islands.  It really looks like water and islands seen from far above the earth.
 HERE is a picture of what they usually look like.
I've always thought those sand gardens were interesting but couldn't imagine installing one in my own garden; too much space would be taken up I thought.
After seeing their pocket sized version I am now game to have one of my own some day.

As Japanese gardens traditionally include very little color, the couple had turned a side area into a colorful alley way to mimic the colors found on an island that they had enjoyed visiting.
Idea to steal: Having ivy grown like columns up the fence!

I got the details on these rocks that look like they have some kind of script on them.
Turns out they were a reproduction of exactly that, which originally was found in the Orient (forget if it was China or Japan.)
 

A wealth person had them made for his property for stepping stones; a few pieces were left over and this garden owner's son noticed them and asked about them.
The stones were to be thrown away....he was able to claim them and get them to his father's home.
Smart boy.

Our next stop was a garden 180 degrees out theme wise from the Japanese garden.
This garden's owner had something like ten water features, including this flowing pump right beside the front door.

This one was right inside the back yard gate...

Then there was a water feature that went from the front to the back of the back yard...with TIKI!!!

Tiki because right next to the stream and water falls was a TIKI BAR!!!
How fun is that!
The string of lights were flip flop lights.

The owner had a pond in the middle of the lawn and in the back you can see a raised pond where he over winters his fish.

But wait!  There was another area in this same yard.
A "Beer" garden, complete with a flowing fountain and a beer can holding frog.
So crazy fun.
We met the owner. 
He said "I drink here."
I imagine he does....
He also built all the water features himself.
 

From there we went to a garden that essentially was a lawn with a very large pond taking up about a quarter of the space.
The pond was nice.....

 

I liked the creative use of a step ladders to feature a couple of seasonal plants.
 

This is the pond.
I thought the use of canna lilies in the water was interesting.

But mostly I admired the waterlilies of course.
The area was buzzing with all sorts of dragonflies stitching around us in the air.
(Oh I should mention a little trick I learned back at the Japanese garden: The owners had inserted a  chest high rod into the ground next to their pond.  Turns out dragonflies like to land on rods. We watched as the rod was visited over and over again by a dragonfly, and the owner could stand inches away from the dragonfly to enjoy looking at it up close as it perched. )

Last stop of the day was a garden that was quite narrow and VERY steep.
The owner had a covered lounge area up top and  dining area there too.
She said that after her kids moved out she tore out their play equipment at the bottom of the yard, said farewell to their backyard sledding hill, and installed a long water course that ran from the very top to the very bottom of the property...all by herself!

The cute little bridge was a ready made item.  The artist thought she would need to have him custom build one for her; turned out his display piece fit perfectly.

She wanted NO DIRT to show anywhere in the garden. 
She planted colorful plantings as an edge for her private stream.
 The grass?
It is artificial.
So smart as it would be almost impossible to drag a lawn mower up and down the step in the later years of life and frankly the grass looked completely natural...like it would need to be cut in about three more days kind of natural.
I absolutely loved her garden.
At the bottom of the stairs was a tented deck with more lounge chairs, a small table and a killer sound system.
I have a feeling that once one walks down the steps one would nestle in for the day.
I know I would...

My friend had a wedding to attend so we had to stop touring around noon...it was hot enough that that was an appealing thought anyway.
The tour tickets were for both Saturday and Sunday and each ticket was good for one's entire family.
I used my ticket to tour again on Sunday after church, this time with Jeff driving.
We managed to visit about six gardens together.
I liked how this garden was constructed from red rock.
 

The owners were a retired couple.

The wife told me they decided to build a deck out back and that took six weeks.
When it was completed, her husband looked out at the garden lawn and announced that there needed to be a pond and water fall too.
As she put it: We are still married....even after building a pond together!
It was an awesome pond and they were a really fun couple.

Each pond that had koi or gold fish (and most if not all of them did) made me want to have the same.
The fish come swirling toward anyone that came near the water's edge, thinking they will be fed.
They really are responsive pets actually.

Another home grown waterfall.
The owners hand selected each rock at the same place where Jeff and I had gathered rocks by the Great Salt Sea.
Great memories for the pond owners.

One garden had a huge cabbage growing, and I found this cutie under a cabbage leaf...(grin)
While Jeff and I poked around the gardens, Master Luke entertained the rest of the garden visitors with smiles and foot kicks of pleasure.

Bernie had been gone on a church men's retreat and when he got home I had him visit the Japanese garden with me.
For some reason, the simplicity of that garden really spoke to me with its small areas of interest and its lathe house brick floored area for shade.
If we ever have to move and landscape a flat rectangular yard space, I am SO going to steal a lot of their ideas.
And isn't that really why we go on house and garden tours anyway?
To steal ideas for our own spaces?
Absolutely!

Touring....

While I was in San Diego for my class reunion, I had a "union" as well.
I got to meet Susan, my second cousin, once removed, who lives on the east coast.
A while ago she was snooping around on line attempting to find out what happened to the brother of her grandfather.
Turns out that brother was my great grand father, Cornelius Brosnan, the inventor of the paper clip.
A google search led her to my blog post about him; and she soon discovered we were kindred spirits.
We have so many things in common...so she left a comment so I could contact her.
We have been exchanging emails for about a year now.
I think God did a sneaky by arranging for her to come to San Diego for a professional conference the same week I was to be in San Diego for my class reunion!
So we finally met in person.
If you have never met in person before...meeting for the first time wouldn't be called a reunion, right?
Union sounds not quite right...maybe we need to figure out what to call a person that one has gotten to know on line and finally meet in person?
Anyhoo...
We worked out a day together so I could show her around my home town.

Of course we HAD to go to Balboa Park. 

(Anyone who visits San Diego and doesn't go to Balboa Park has really missed seeing the crown jewel of San Diego.)

It was uncharacteristically warm, but we walked the park from end to end chatting away happily.
I only took a few pictures of plants that I thought were kind of interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

The water lily pond was a stop for photo op.

Beautiful.
(Disturbingly, four days the water feature was seriously damaged by a "rave" of people who swarmed the area for a water cannon fight at midnight.  The plants, the koi and the fill/drain system were destroyed by the crowd of hooligans. So sickening to think that such a gentle beauty could be trashed without a second thought. )

From Balboa Park we crossed over to Coronado Island to walk around the Hotel Del Coronado. 

Then we went to the San Diego Mission  aka the birth place of San Diego.
The mission was begun 1769.
I have always had a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that this mission was a quiet key event on the west coast during the same time as all the Revolutionary War events were happening on the East coast.
My cousin Susan works as an archivist for an organization within the Catholic church.
She has charge of artifacts of the Roman Catholic church; I was eager to visit this bit of Catholic history with her.
(A side note to fellow cat lovers: She has a cat who gets to stay with her monk friend while she is out of town.  I seriously wish we could have gotten a San Diego Padre bobble head for her to give to her friend...and we got a bit of a chuckle that we were on Friar Road at one point of our touring.) 

From there we drove to La Jolla to see the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial, and so she could meet my dad.
Her dad and my dad's mom were first cousins...it is unknown if they ever met during their lives.
Seems a pity to think that they didn't.
From there we went out to Old Town for a Mexican dinner where we continued to talk and talk...ten hours of catching up was only enough to scratch the surface of our lives and served to confirm that it is a real pity that we live too far apart for regular get togethers.
Hopefully one day I will get to see her in her home town where my great great grandparents raised a family in the mid 1800's and where her branch of the family has continued to live until this very day.
Sue was reluctant to have me photograph her so I am not sharing pictures of her in this post.
Interesting to me: She looks quite a bit like my dad's twin sisters.
Sue...I will have to dig out a picture of them and send it to you.
So instead of posting a picture, just picture in your mind a lively, delightful, interesting Godly woman and I think you will have a snapshot of her that works!

It only took forty years....

La Jolla High.
The Vikings!
I was a Viking...a La Jolla High School student who graduated in 1972.
It has been 40 years since I donned my red cap and gown combo and walked on the football field with my classmates for one last time.
Most of us scattered after that.

My senior picture.

Now what is rather amazing:
The girl in the big picture apparently unable to measure something?

That's Colleen.
Her last name began with a "P" so her senior picture wasn't on the same page as me and the rest of us with last names that began with a "D".
(I'm in the middle of the top row.)
Was her presences on this page some kind of foreshadowing of how our lives would unfold?
Colleen went to Cal Poly San Luis Obisbo for her degree in business.
I went to Oregon State.
After she graduated she married and then settled down to raise a family here in Salt Lake City while I returned to San Diego, then went to Texas before winding up in SLC myself.

In fact three of my classmates settled here too, long before I arrived.
The guy on the end next to Colleen is Nick.
We went to the same elementary school together too.
He almost aced his SAT test and now has a Phd and teaches Math at the University of Utah.
Tom, the other guy, he lives in Park City now.
Colleen cleverly had gotten their contact information somewhere along the way and arranged for us to have a Salt Lake area Class Reunion Prefunction .
We went for dinner together two weeks ago and talked for hours at a local SLC restaurant.

Nick had merited a special mention in our annual.
(Both guys were class "hotties" but apparently that fact hadn't registered with them as teenagers.  One of the guys didn't even go to the prom figuring no girl would be interested.  Hoo boy...how could he not have known?)

There were about 320+ kids in our class.
The fact that eleven of our classmates made National Merit Semi-Finalist was quite remarkable.
Those names...some of them were in my kindergarten class.

Last Saturday night...we all gathered together again in La Jolla for our 40th class reunion.
Or at least about half of us did.
That's a pretty high turn out really.
I had attended my 10th reunion as a young wife and mother of a three and four year old.
Most of my classmates were not married then or did not have kids yet if they were married.
I also attended my 20th reunion when my kids were in their teens.
My classmates by then were eager for me to meet their new spouses and to show me pictures of their toddlers.
At a party that was part of that reunion our kids were all invited.
A classmate mistook my fourteen year old daughter for someone's wife.
(eyes crossing there.)
The 30th...it was OK.
Everyone was sort of competitive about their careers and their kids and such.
I had decided to forgo any further reunions.

Girl pictured above:
Gini, who was one of my best buds in elementary school.
Never say never, especially about going to a reunion, right?
So what changed my mind about going to this one?
Face book.
Starting last winter a Facebook page was started for our class, and another page was started for the hometown memories of La Jolla kids who were in high school sometime between 1964 and 1984.
The most active Facebookers were the people who were in high school in the mid 70's.
Suddenly on-line conversations between long lost classmates broke out.
The intelligence and wit of my classmates shone and I realized I wanted to be with them again, in real life, one more time.
The reunion was held at the Scripps Institutes's Birch Aquarium, (which explains why there is a shark soaring over our heads). The Aquarium is right up the street from my parents house.

(Above, Sherry, another elementary school buddy from around the block.)
The first person I saw after I parked my car was a classmate named Torry who was another classmate from kindergarten on.
Another and then another woman joined us, each of us smiling ear to ear and grabbing each other for a long over due hug.
We all said the same thing:
I knew EXACTLY who you were, your smile is just the same as I remembered.(followed by blurting out our names and saying "It just took me a moment to put a name with the face!")
Thankfully our name tags had our senior picture and our names, including our maiden names, in BIG LETTERS. 

This guy...John is an avid conservative Christian political FBer.
Nick is also an avid (but not religious) FBer, and he posts stuff on the liberal side.
We scrap and argue via FB nearly daily.
John and a lot of our class are conservative Christians now.
We all were quick to talk about our faith and what God was up to in our lives.

Maybe that is what made this reunion so special.
A few of us were believers in high school; the rest got saved along the way.
We Christian clicked into family reunion mode right away.

Our year book had a month by month recap of our senior year.
That last line about our class being the first senior class to win a Spirit ribbon?
Well, it was true.
Still is.
At least three other "pre" reunion events were privately held for anyone who cared to come.
The actual reunion began at 6pm, and the wait staff had to chase us out of the building at 10:30, with all of us frantically trying to get last bits of catch up talk in as we left.
As one guy put it:
It was like doing four straight hours of speed dating!
Where do you live, what do you do, what have you been doing?The questions and answers flew fast as we mingled.
Someone had brought our old school papers; the former athletes got to read about their high school game day glories all over again.

For one lovely very warm August night we all returned to  La Jolla as Vikings, Class of 1972.
A few years after we graduated our lovely red tiled roof old Spanish styled high school with a view of the Pacific Ocean was torn down and rebuilt as a huge windowless box.
We can never really go home again to our high school.
But collectively, we carry what it was with us where ever we go.
And La Jolla High school as it was comes back into being whenever and where ever we gather together again.

*****

(PS: If you take another look at my picture in the black and orange dress, you might notice that I am wearing very high heels.  I was tall my whole life and suffered with the "Green Giant" and such for many years. Slouching to look short was a way of life.  For some reason I found the "perfect" shoes for this dress that just happened to be very high heels which normally I can not wear for more than a minute.  These heels...I wore the whole night with great comfort!  One of my favorite comments as short classmates guys looked up was "How tall were in in high school? I do remember you were tall..."
Yeah I was was tall back then.
5'9" to be exact.
But dang...let me tell ya...I finally out grew that awkward place and with the help of heels, had sprouted up to a happy 6'1" tall for reunion night.
Happy Sigh.
It felt so great to finally not be worried about being tall!)