Rosemarie’s Obsessions

Succulent AND Cacti albums created

I’ve been making good use of my Picasa albums, creating quite a few in recent days, with HUNDREDS of pix…of all the C&S events during the 4-day President’s BD weekend.

If you have some time to kill, get some coffee or other beverage of your choice…and take a gander at the pix:

http://picasaweb.google.com/RosemarieRoma

Agave ‘Blue Glow’ outside Bot. Bldg. at Balboa Park:

I don’t know the names of the plants (well, I might know a few), so I hope that doesn’t drive you whacko.

There’s  one album of the Botanical Building in Balboa Park too. Nice Orchids!

Hope you enjoy! I have to get back to my list!

Slideshow…or not :(

Trying out something new…to see if I can embed a slideshow. Whoops…I guess not…or I haven’t figured out how to do it.

Here’s a link instead~you can choose to watch the slideshow or individual pix:

http://picasaweb.google.com/RosemarieRoma/OldTownBuckners?feat=directlink

My friend, Al came to visit from DE. One of the places we went was a succulent plant shop in historic Old Town, San Diego, called The Plant Man. Hope you enjoy the pix!

Maybe more plant pix to come in the near future.

One pic from the album:

Sunsets around town

Thought I’d better not let February slip by, so I’m sharing some of the many sunsets shots I’ve taken recently.

Happy New Year!

2009 is here already?!! Wow! Happy New Year, everyone! Wishing you a prosperous & healthy year ahead!

I suppose now that the holidays are behind us, I should concentrate on getting back on track! I’m hoping I’ll be able to get more entries here of our doings throughout the year. Goodness knows I’ve got lots of catching up to do.

Enjoy yourselves!

Bowling Blurb

I haven’t been keeping up with my bowling adventures!

I am still in 2 leagues ~one on Monday nights & one on Thursday (for which I am secretary-treasurer). We have 80 members & it is currently the largest league at our center. My brother is on both teams. One of our teammates on Mon. had to drop out due to surgery. She’ll come back in January when we start a new league session.

I have a 164 avg in Monday’s league & a 172 average for Thursday’s. My game scores have fluctuated so much lately. I haven’t been able to get in enough practice to be consistent. :(  My score had dipped down as far as 130 a couple weeks ago. Eek! That was sad! I’m happy to say there’s still hope, as last week I managed a 256 game! I believe that was the first time I started out the game in strikes & had 7 in a row! Yay! That same game, my brother had a 195 game! Our competitors still blasted us, as we only got one point from that one game…and it wasn’t by much!

I also belong to a club of ladies called the 200 Club. Bowling centers all over San Diego have their own 200 club. Each month, one of the clubs host an invitational tournament at their facility. We hosted ours in September with a 50’s theme. As I was working the tournament, I bowled the previous day. We dressed up in 50’s gear & had a classic car club bring their beauties for all to ogle. It was a blast! I ended up winning money from that tournament, coming in 2nd place! One of my games was 230! I was happy with that!

Elvis even made an appearance! :) 

This classy ‘57 Chevy was my favorite!

Just a sampling of the neat cars on display!

Had to show the get-up I wore, as it took longer to get dressed that morning than it did for my wedding! Last pic showing Ramah Lee in our Club shirt. I finally got around to being measured to have one made for me!

I managed to get a 222 in today’s tournament hosted by the 200 Club in San Marcos. Won’t know the results till next month, but it was announced someone else had a 257. I may get some sidepot money, but who knows?! It was fun, either way. We enjoyed a buffet style lunch & I inhaled scrumptious carrot cake too!

My brother & I will be in a tournament this coming Friday…a 9 pin no tap tourney. Good for us…that means 9 pins falling counts as a strike! That ought to be fun! Can’t WAIT!

Succulent Cart Jumpers

I realize I probably buy plants once per month, but don’t always post them. So, even though I’ve already posted this in a thread at my favorite forum (thegardenforums.org) I figured I’d put ‘em up here as well.

I’m fairly certain I am the one who coined the phrase “cart jumpers” while posting at Garden Web forums several years back. For those who haven’t heard of this, it is when you go shopping at …insert your store/nursery name here…and you experience this phenomenon…plants JUMP into your CART! Thus, when you return home with your haul & your significant other asks, “Why did you buy all of those plants?”, your response is “Oh, those? Those are just cart jumpers! They jumped in my cart & said ‘take me home with you’!” LOL

Most days now I have a self-imposed rule (although I used to blame it on my hubby) that I cannot buy any more plants than I can carry (meaning NO cart, for jumpers).  :D  You don’t know how many times employees have offered to get me a cart, seeing what I was attemping to carry! Hee hee! You’d be amazed!

This past Saturday was an exception, as I went to our local Cacti & Succulent Society meeting/sale in Balboa Park.

They always have neat plants that you won’t find at your run-of-the-mill box stores. So I went prepared…with my own cart. I have one of those fold up jobbers with telescoping handle & wheels!

They were having Stephen Ingram as a speaker, who has a new book out: Cacti, Agaves and Yuccas of California and Nevada.  I now own one of those too (signed!). :)  Good excuse to go, as my collection includes several Agave now. Hubby went to clear brush from the horse trails, so it lent me some time to attend for once! It also afforded me a chance to visit with a couple of my forum buddies, Jürgen & Mark!

Okay…Too much blabbing…on with the pix…my cart jumpers, plus 3 I won from the raffle table & one gift (for being a guest at the mtg). Names, if known, will be seen when you click to view the pix.

Of the group pic above, I guess I should tell what’s in the box, starting from lower left & going clockwise:  Crassula ‘Ivory Pagoda’, Aloe ‘Quicksilver’, Gasteria ‘White Dwarf’, tagged as Aloe ‘Dapple Green’-I doubt (looks like it has sinkatana in it), tagged as Aloe ‘Webley’s Bronze’-probably meant ‘Walmsley’s Bronze’, but still I doubt-I think maybe ‘Black Gem’, Aeonium ‘Sunburst’ & a neat find for me…Kelly Griffin’s Aloe ‘Pink Blush’!

My awesome find…Euphorbia lactea variegata (below):

Now for the plants…in neat pots…I won from the raffle table:

A few others that were on the raffle table:

And last, but not least, here is the plant gifted to me as a guest, from Mark’s collection, Aloe krapholiana var. dumoulinii:

Now I’d better scoot! Have to get to the stables for my horsey chores, as I have bowling league tonight! Enjoy your day, everyone!

Eugene, OR Part 6 vacation

This is a continuation of our JUNE trip…:P when we stopped for the night shortly before reaching Eugene, OR where our son & his wife live now. We have never been up here before.

I always take my camera with me for the crack of the dawn walks with Woody ~to do his biz. Found a few morning lit plants to snap.

  Since we wouldn’t let George get in the hotel’s front window drapes, he found a window…in the bathroom. Hee hee!

As we got into town, we found Eugene to be a pretty town. Got settled into our hotel before going for an outing with the family.

We went with son & his wife for a walk in a nicely wooded park & then around a lake on the outskirts of Eugene. Had a great outing!

We hesitate to put family member pix online…hence the messing with son’s face and absence of lots of people pix!

Hwy 101, CA Part 5 vacation

Getting back to this…before I completely forget where we went & what we did! I only have 2 pix in my folder for this. I think I had planned to pick out more photos, but now not sure what I had in mind.

SOoooo…here is one coastal shot along Rte 101 & one of a rushing river along the other side of the road on the way up the California coast. If I find other pix, I’ll add them later.

I had not been along this section of the coast before. It was a refreshing change from inland routes. Oh, now I recall one reason there weren’t more pix…I was driving!!

Newer additions ~horses!

I suppose I’d better get a blurb in here before too much time passes…about the horses I mentioned OH SO long ago!

It’ll be photo-heavy…IF I can recall how to DO that!  Not much time to write anything about it now, but I’m sure that’ll change over time.

Chaps is our gelding quarterhorse Palamino (hubby’s) & Baby is our Chincoteague paint mare (mine). We bought them in northern CA (near sis & BIL’s) & drove 16 hrs or so to get them here. Then, 2 months ago we got Cherokee, a sorrel quarter horse, from the desert (Indio). You could say we’re babysitting him. We plan to take him back in a couple weeks. He’s been a good trail horse for me.

So, here are some pix of the 2 up in N. Cal & then here at the stables:

Victorian Ferndale, CA Part 4 vacation

Historic Victorian Village of Ferndale, founded in the late 1800s, was slightly off our beaten path. It can be found south of Arcata, CA. I had heard of this long ago from my friend, Eleanor, who lives in WI. I had never heard of it before she asked (several yrs. ago) if I had ever been there. I looked it up online, bookmarked it & then forgot all about it (like most things). I am SO happy we stumbled upon it!

One of the hotels in the Redwoods had a travel magazine of all the things to do in the area. I found a large ad with an illustration of these Victorian bldgs. on Main St. of Ferndale. Neat! Looked it up & figured we could manage swinging by there. This was after a day of looking at Redwoods, so I wasn’t sure how long the boys would last doing MORE looky-lou stuff. We did a “drive-by shooting”, as I call it! Well, I got out of the car for some pix, walking along snapping all the houses, as hubby followed along in the car. We found it took too much time to get in & out of the car, since I was taking pix of just about every house!

The boys asked why I liked this stuff so much. Dad told them, “Mom & women her age (like my sister) have this thing for these Victorian houses.” Then he asked me why I thought that was. I suppose it’s because they look like the doll houses we never had. As much as I’d like a house like this, I know the upkeep would be difficult. You will see several pix of a house I was saying “This is MY house!” the whole time I was taking pix of it. They had a life-sized statue of a black & white cow inside the front fence! Hee hee! Fun stuff!

Check out this site on Ferndale, if you have time:

http://www.victorianferndale.org/chamber/history.htm

These are just some of the pix I took, but still many more than previous posts, as it was difficult for me to decide just which ones to show. There were many pretty gardens, but I mainly concentrated on the houses. The decor they used was fabulous too…lamps, lace curtains, statues…but that will have to wait for some other time.

Hope you enjoyed the tour! I had a fantastic time in the course of an hour or so!