Tallulah-Palooza Friday

Lawrence Mae of Arabia.
Sister Mary Maylene Benedicta Tallulah Cutiepie.

From My Garden, February Edition

We're getting ready to re-do the gardens, front and back, and the cutting garden is in a state of disarray, yet there is still loveliness to be seen. Above are daffodils that I plunked in the ground a few years ago; they were a potted plant given as a gift, and I just sort of threw them in the dirt. They reliably come up every year, god bless them.
Same with these snowdrops (love the dotted accents!). These came up earlier in the month.
Ditto this hyacinth: it was an Easter present in a pot from B., and I later put it in the cutting garden. The bloom is small, but lovely!
Spotlight, please! This was the very last rose before I pruned my bushes back heavily earlier in the month (a bit late, actually, but they've now sprung back to life with fresh new leaves). Gardening will always surprise you...sometimes unpleasantly, but usually in the nicest of ways!

Love Day Breakfast

A savory custard with mushrooms and truffle oil, toasty brown bread, and a strong cup of coffee with milk + my honey = a perfect Valentine's Day breakfast.

The First Foziewisp

My mom will tell you that I used to call bits of dandelions "fairies," way (WAY) back when. So dandelions and their relatives--this is not a dandelion but something similar--are the Ur-Foziewisps!

Before and After

Lovely.
Yummy.

Tallulah-Palooza Friday

Tallulah Mae is portraying how I feel today: I have the flu. Boo.
Yep, that about sums it up...

Bird Geek Week: Tijuana Estuary and Rare Bird!

OK, fellow bird geeks: get your scopes and binoculars ready: The Great Backyard Bird Count starts tomorrow!
Last weekend I took a bird-watching stroll down at the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve. As its name implies, it's right down at the Mexican border.
We saw a juvenile harrier (also several hawks and a kite).
The endangered clapper rail is there on the right with his duck friends at left. Their numbers have dipped disastrously with the loss of estuarine and wetland habitat.
That is a curlew up there...super-long and pointy beak. My beloved little Canon Elph camera really isn't the right equipment for this sort of thing, but hey!
And a little Anna's hummingbird. We also saw a great egret, a snowy egret, a godwit, phoebes, and of course sparrows and finches. And bunny rabbits, on the menu for all of the circling raptors.

Birds--they rock!