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.

California Poppies

My wife and I were driving along east of Palmdale, California recently and noticed a reference on the map to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. Although we didn't stop at the reserve itself, following are some of the scenes in the area. The last 2 years these fields were all brown due to drought conditions, but this year the fields have come alive with poppies. Since it was extremely windy, the flower petals are closed up, but the orange color of the poppies was a sight to behold. They only bloom from March thru May so we were fortunate to be able to see them. You can see why they are the California state flower.

California State Flower

California Poppy

Eschscholtzia californica

California Indians cherished the poppy as both a source of food and for oil extracted from the plant. Its botanical name, Eschsholtzia californica, was given by Adelbert Von Chamisso, a naturalist and member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, who dropped anchor in San Francisco in 1816 in a bay surrounded by hills of the golden flowers. Also sometimes known as the flame flower, la amapola, and copa de oro (cup of gold), the poppy grows wild throughout California. It became the state flower in 1903. Every year April 6 is California Poppy Day, and Governor Wilson proclaimed May 13-18, 1996, Poppy Week.

More roses

I have been traveling around for the last few weeks and when I returned home, the rest of my roses had bloomed. Due to favorable weather conditions, they are truly spectacular this year.

This rose is called Ultimate Pink.

This one is called Mellow Yellow and is one of the most fragrant roses available.

The above are called Double Delight and have pink, white & yellow blossoms.

This rose is called Honor.

The roses are all hybrid tea roses.

Joy of flowers

The weather this year has been perfect for flowers! Following are a few random shots from our yard.

These flowers really are crocus although they grew much taller than usual this year!

This hybrid tea is known at In The Mood and is the first bloom of 4 different bushes that line one side of my driveway.

Spring has sprung again

This article appeared in the Sacramento Bee so Joan and I decided to go have a look. Following are photos of what we found.


It's easy to miss the short driveway into the Jensen Botanical Garden in Carmichael. Traffic on busy, bustling Fair Oaks Boulevard flies by with hardly a sideways glance. You have to look closely for the small wooden sign and the iron gate.

Make the turn, though, and you'll be spilled into a different world. Suddenly you're in a small dirt parking lot tucked among oaks and redwoods and a garden of uncommon beauty. In front of you, a garden paradise entices you to explore, to walk along the wide dirt paths and enjoy spring's crisp beauty.

A creeklike drainage ditch, lined with bright green tufts of white-flowering allium, meanders along one side of the parking lot. Choruses of croaking frogs almost drown out the hum of the road noise. Birds fill the trees with cacophonous chatter.

A slightly dilapidated covered wooden bridge, an Eagle Scout project from many years ago, lures you into the garden where thousands of daffodils grace a swale at the top of the garden. A thousand tulips, just beginning to bloom, carpet the ground beneath a towering, gnarled heritage oak. The deciduous magnolias, snow white and deep purple, are already open. There's tomato-red quince, bright yellow forsythia, lavender and purple violets hugging the ground, and glorious camellias, some so old they've grown into small trees.

The site was once home to Charles and Marguerite Jensen. The couple moved to the 3.5-acre site in 1958, and Charles Jensen vowed to turn the blackberry-choked property into a garden paradise. And he did. He planted 900 azaleas, 100 rhododendrons and 30 varieties of magnolia, as well as numerous dogwoods, Japanese maples, camellias and more.