Carmel & Monterey flowers

Spring is a wonderful time of the year to visit the Monterey peninsula in California. The flowers that bloom by the ocean are gorgeous.

Edgemere Cottages

This is Piccadilly cottage where we stayed in Carmel-by-the Sea. It is part of the Edgemere cottages property and was built in 1912. The owner grew up here, left home for 20 years, and then returned to manage and update the property. It will be beautiful when they finish all of the renovations in a year or so. It is one block from the beach.

This is Magenta, one of 2 resident cats. We only saw the other one once. Magenta likes to come in and visit the guests.

Yard ornaments are scattered about the property. I didn't ask where they came from.

Point Lobos

I took these pictures on our recent visit to Point Lobos State Reserve.

Information about the reserve can be found at

http://pt-lobos.parks.state.ca.us/

Flutterbys

Following are some Monarch butterflies sitting on, what else, butterfly bushes! These butterflys overwinter in Pacific Grove, where these pictures were taken.

Just Ducky

I stumbled across this car in the parking lot of The Inn & Links of Spanish Bay in Monterey. It proves that some people will collect just about anything!

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.