A Summer Evening Walk at the Marina

Although Hubby dislikes summer because of its accompanying heat, I often remind him that one of the positive things about summer are the long days when the sun doesn't set until almost 9 p.m. even a month past the summer solstice. It is summer evenings like these that a walk at our town's marina is a particularly refreshing experience.

Looking across the straits, there aren't any barges or ships coming in from the San Francisco Bay this evening. The water is empty, the sky turns orange, and the breezes are cool on our faces...


The hills shelter our little cove on the straits. Ripples aspiring to be waves lap the shoreline, leaving a log of driftwood undisturbed...


Water birds with slender scooping beaks scuttle and dip on hairpin legs grabbing one last bite before the night closes in...


Against the darkening summer sky the golden summer wetland grass rustles as we pass occasionally revealing the flit and flutter of a stealthy bird on the wing...


The sun sets, the shoreline grows dark, the wetlands go to sleep for the night, and we walk back to our waiting car.

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Brugmansia Sniffing and Pomegranates Blushing

Silly me! It didn't dawn on me to try and smell the brugmansia blossoms until Kylee from Our Little Acre commented that I should go take a whiff. Shortly after reading her comment, Hubby and I went out together to sniff for the first time. Wow! The scent is heavenly! It smells like a hybrid scent of lilac and daffodil to me.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me that they would have a scent. I guess it's because I've always been so entranced by the sheer size of these large blooms (about 4 inches wide and over 6 inches in length) I didn't even think to smell them. Silly me!

After the sniffing was done, I enjoyed photographing in the light of a summer evening--the best light for my style of shooting.

Hubby was headed back in the house when he stopped, turned and said, "Here's a sure sign that autumn is coming!"

I looked up from shooting the brugmansia to see Hubby cradling a blushing pomegranate in his hand. For Hubby, this is sign of hope--a sign that the heat of summer will actually end one day--sooner rather than later. He was very happy to see the blush on the shiny pomegranate skins. So was I.

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After the heat is over...

After the heat is over as the sun slips over the western horizon and the moon comes peeking through the branches of pomegranate blossoms...








...the garden remains awake and alive for every last second of light.

The bees take their last sips of water at the pond's edge to take back to the hive where they will rest for the night.










Oreo, the garden kitty, emerges from her cool napping spot that has kept her protected from the day's scorching heat.

She patrols her garden before nightfall, pausing to take a little drink of refreshing water from the pond before she moves on to sniff all the smells she missed during her daytime slumber.

















Although it is getting dark soon, the bougainvillea are happy after having soaked in a good dose of heat and sunshine throughout the day.



The Bells of Ireland stand green and cool as if the heat didn't even touch their corner of the garden. Green and lush reminders that spring was not so long ago, these bells must be quietly tolling the day's end for only the garden to hear.













The Japanese Water Iris in their stately purple robes stand majestically against the twilight in the western sky.

The deep cool tones of blue and purple will soon be mirrored in the summer night sky.

Reflections at Pond's Edge

Today has been a day of soul-searching, self-reflection, and pondering. Fortunately, I have gardens that are conducive to those activities.

The fish obliged me as I sat at the pond's edge and sprinkled food flakes into the water for them to eat. Dexter, on his leash, sprawled out behind my chair while Tom Tom wandered along his patrol paths sniffing the "message boards" of the felines in the neighborhood. The dragonflies are still out and about in our climate, so they came out and zipped back and forth in a canopy above me. I've managed to go completely bug bite free this summer thanks to those beloved dragonflies.

Sometimes, one just needs to take time and think. And that's exactly what I did.