Chrysanthemums

It always amazes me how you can live in one place for nearly 40 years and still not be aware of some of the interesting places that exist in the surrounding area. I just read in the newspaper that after more than 40 years, Ted King was selling his nursery and the operation was moving to Oregon. King's Mums is know throughout the nation for its stunning variety of chrysanthemums. His was the last nursery in the country catering to retail business. Since it was closing at the end of the month, we decided to take a look and were astounded at what we found there. I had no idea there were so many varieties of mums. Enjoy the flowers!

The above flowers are trained by tieing them onto chicken wire. It takes one season to achieve this look.

As you can see, mums can also be trained as bonsai.

Autumn in Apple Hill

Autumn is in the air. What better time to go up to Apple Hill in Camino, California and see the sights.

Lots of apples just waiting to be taken home.

Cute crafts for sale.

Pretty flower baskets.

Need a pre-decorated pumpkin?

Spaghetti squash.

The above is probably the largest collection of apple peelers in the world!

Pretty good crop of pumpkins.

High Mountain flowers

These pictures were taken July 13th in the Mammoth Lakes area. The wildflowers in the area are just gorgeous, as you can see from the following photos.

Best Show on Tracks

I attended the Best Show on Tracks at the Dan Best ranch in Woodland, California on Sunday, June 22nd, just before the State of California went up in smoke! It was the largest collection of Best, Holt and Caterpillar tractors assembled in one place. There were over 400 tractors from all over the world in attendance. I only took 129 pictures of which I have included some examples here.

The first pictures are of a 1905 Holt harvester being pulled by a 27 mule team.

Lots of steam tractors were operating during the day.


Note the size of these tractors!





This is a bale press. Hay from the stack is raised onto the platform and raked into an opening. The horses are then driven around in a circle which causes a press to push up from the bottom and form a bale in the box above the opening. The bale is then manually wrapped with baling wire and then the press is released, the door is opened, and out comes a bale of hay. As you can imagine, it took a long time to process all of the hay into bales.