Lemon Tree Tales

California Coastline - Los Osos and Montana de Oro

Saturday was a very long but fun day for us. It started with a lovely visit with my grandmother to take her out to lunch. Then we drove down to Los Osos to meet up with Dan - one of our racing friends. After a quick turn around town looking at the hot rods near the beach, we drove to the Montana de Oro State Park. (I didn't even realize that this is the same state park that my grandpa worked at for eighteen years, but it makes sense because it's not too far from Atascadero and Morro Bay.)

We hiked along the coastline trail enjoying the ocean views along the way. There's something so amazing about the ocean waves pounding the cliffs, carving away pieces of the land little by little.

Spectra Green hot rod at Los Osos

View of bay at Los Osos

Coastline at Montana de Oro State Park

Arrrrrgg, climb the skull and walk fifty paces north to the buried treasure!

Trail at Montana de Oro State Park ... the fog rolled in very quickly!

Happy Trails!

Tea for two

Yesterday my friend Trena invited me to join her for an early tea at Lisa's Tea Treasures in San Jose while she was on an errand to buy a gift certificate for Miss L's teacher. This was such a quaint little tea room. It had the same type of molding and high ceilings that Steve and I found in little restaurants and sitting rooms while we toured the Irish and English countrysides. I ordered the Lady's Respite (traditional sandwiches, scones and quiche with Earl Grey tea) and Trena tried the Mother's Day special which had a delicious looking salad with strawberries and nuts in addition to sandwiches and scones, all accompanied by vanilla tea. Our hostess wore a sweet pink dress with a white apron modeled upon Victorian garb. Of course I think that the Victorians would be scandalized by the knee length hem. It was a delightful lunch and we're looking forward to taking Miss L and Miss J there sometime later this summer. We'll all wear our best "lady-like" dresses and have lots of fun.

Fort Jones, CA

Since Steve had both Monday and Tuesday off we decided that we could make the drive up north to visit with my grandparents at my Great Aunt Mandy's place in Fort Jones, CA. That's about 15 miles west of Yreka in northern California near the Oregon border. We were warned that there was snow so we took my car. (Steve's car has 3 season tires.) Luckily it was just a wee bit overcast driving the mountains near Mt. Shasta and snow was only on the sides of the road a little bit. It was cold!!! We had a great time. My grandparents treated us to a banana split at the soda fountain at the old pharmacy in Etna, a near by town. The safe door shown above is for the gold nuggets vault that was installed sometime in the 1880s.

Here's grandma at the soda fountain. Near the window is a display of little red boxes. They were filled with sheet music for the player piano - it still works and the pharmacy owner played it for us.

Steve and grandpa were engrossed in pictures of our travels as well as Steve's racing adventures. When not talking about that, they started in on airplanes. Both of them are pilots and love flying. I love that they get along so well!

I asked grandpa to make his famous polenta for dinner. He's dishing it out for my Great Aunt Mandy to put on the spaghetti sauce and parmesan cheese. Both of them were born in Italy. My grandpa was 15 when they arrived in the states. I'm not sure how much younger Mandy is, but you can definitely tell that they're siblings. Lots of little snapping back and forth, with lots of jesting too. All in all it was a very nice visit.

Home again!

We got back home safe and sound yesterday afternoon. Just enough time to unload the car (it was stuffed with luggage and doll-making goodies), rest for an hour or so, visit with Steve (I missed him!) and then drive over to the Gals & Dolls club meeting. Whew! Lots of road traveled but I had a lot of fun. Diane from doll club was my driving companion and made the trip go by quickly. I managed to make 15 ATCs for Doll U ... they're posted over at 101 Fairy Lane. I'll post more later, but now my grandparents are on their way to our house for a visit.

The Road to Doll U

My bags are packed, supplies gathered round, and class homework all done in baggies. Checked the list and I'm ready for Doll U. I'll check emails a bit, but I can't promise that I'll be able to return them right away. Boy have I been busy getting ready for this! I still haven't finished my ATCs and the poor Princess of Procrastination needs her arms and head sewn on .. oops! I have managed to get three Lemondrop illustrations done. One for IF is up already and the other two will post later in the week. Go check them out at 101 Fairy Lane! Now I'm off ... see you when I get back.

Oops ...this was supposed to post on Monday but I saved it as draft only. I'm at Doll U and having a blast! The Princess of Procrastination decided that she needed more time. But today's class has been going great!

Flight to Florida

This past weekend Steve and I flew back to Orlando to visit my little brother Ronnie, his wife and our nephew S. We hadn't been able to visit them before now and wanted to meet little S who's almost 2 now! He's a little cutie-pie and looks a lot like my brother. It was a short visit but S was a super friendly little guy and warmed to Steve and I pretty quickly. That made it such fun for us. On Saturday my brother had to do a quick book-signing event at the local Barnes & Noble. Here he is drawing for the children.

My brother's an animator. He used to work for Disney but when they shut down their Orlando Animation Department he did a lot of freelance book illustrations. This one, The Adventures of Lady, was done via Project Firefly Animation Studios. He illustrated the pictures and another past Disney employee "painted" them with Photoshop. I think if you look his name up in Amazon, a lot of his previous Disney board books come up. The newer ones don't list the artists by name anymore. They just say Disney Art Department or something like that.

It's interesting that both my brother and I ended up being artists/designers. We definitely got it from our dad who really wanted to be an architect when he was younger. I remember when he wanted to build a crew cab dually '56 Ford truck. Before he did anything with the actual trucks, he had me buy two models so that he could build it that way first. He's very visual and has a picture in his mind every time he looks at a '56 truck. And his mom, my grandmother, liked to paint, sew, and make porcelain dolls when she was a few years younger. I guess it runs in the family.  :-)

Return of the Prodigal Suitcase

This is the surprise that was waiting for me on the porch when I opened the door to go for my morning walk. (Okay it's something new that I'm trying to do - walk for 20 to 40 minutes every day. They say it takes three weeks to instill a habit so that means I'm a third of the way there.) Yes it took THREE weeks for this baby to make its way home from somewhere in the depth of the hell that is otherwise known as Baggage Control, Heathrow Airport! I'm just glad that it finally arrived. Maybe there's hope that they'll find the remaining piece of lost luggage?

So now I have to gather all the dirty laundry and head over to the laundromat. Oh, I haven't told you about the washer yet, have I? It's been broken for a month now. The Maytag repairman has been very busy at our house in between shooting commercials. So far he's been here four times and still has yet to get the darn thing working again. He thought that maybe he had a box of defective wax motors but now he thinks that the circuit board he installed wasn't good. He said that he'll be here on Tuesday with a spanking brand new board. I'm hoping that it does the trick because I have to tell you that I'm not having fun going to the laundromat with five loads of laundry. It may have been a fine thing to do ten years ago but since then I've been spoiled with having a washer/dryer set-up in my apartments and now the house.

Scotland: Edinburgh Castle

Our last real day of our travels had us at Edinburgh Castle. Now this really is quite the fortress. It's on a large hill in the center of the city. Lots of great buildings, even a little chapel that they use for weddings. In fact we passed a bridal party when we entered the castle grounds. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but these two had the beautiful blue sky as backdrop. Apparently the Queen was due to arrive in the city half an hour from when we toured the grounds. The army was getting ready to give her a 21-gun salute as soon as her plane touched the ground. (Actually, just reading up on the gun salute, and it doesn't necessarily have only 21 guns. It depends on the occasion and person being honored. In this case, I think that it's called a royal salute.) She was going to be there for the opening of the Scottish Parliament the next day. Of course the next day is when the Glasgow Airport attack occurred. I wonder if the new PM's coming into office had anything to do with the terrorists' timing?

We walked down the Royal Mile - called that because it connects two royal residences. Oh, and it's not a mile long, more like a mile and a quarter, or half even. Mostly filled with tourist traps. These were two interesting storefronts. A very colorful street vendor - don't you just love this little fellow? He reminds me of a Scottish Buster Brown, but I'm not sure who he really is.

We also stopped at the Camera Obscura just past the castle entrance on the Royal Mile. That was most entertaining due to a delightful young Scot who laid on the accent pretty thickly - mostly to amuse us tourists I'm sure. Still it was good for getting a nice tour of the city all from the comfort of a small dark room. We knew at this point that we wouldn't be able to spend too much time in city so it worked out perfectly. That's it for our vacation. It was a great experience and we're glad that we were able to finally see Scotland. It has beautiful scenery and very polite people.

Scotland: Various places

We were quite lucky with the weather for most of our trip. Not too much rain and a few extremely beautiful days. Apparently since we've left it's been raining cats and dogs. If I recall this is the view from a valley near Ullapool but I don't know for sure. Isn't it simply stunning?

Now these next photos you'll have to click on to see better - they're a collection of animals seen along the way. Highland cow, dairy cows herded by a minivan, white sheep, black sheep, and bunnies, LOTS of bunnies. I swear that we must have found a scene from Watership Down there were so many bunnies and rabbit holes. We also had to stop our car for this hungry little lamb. I can just imagine the mama asking if it couldn't wait just one minute. The black lamb also had been nursing when we drove past. But do you know how hard it is to snap a good picture of two black sheep?

This little lamb was so cute that we stopped the car to take a picture but it wouldn't look at me. Finally I resorted to baa-aaa-ing from the car so that it'd look at me. Yeah, it looked all right, but so did the mama. I'm pretty sure that she was gonna ram the car if we stayed any longer.

Scotland: Balvenie Distillery Tour

Now this was the most amazing distillery tour we've been on - second only to the one at Ardbeg a couple years ago. (And that ranks first in my mind because the young man giving the tour was extremely passionate about whisky and its history on the Isle of Islay.)

The Balvenie Distillery Tour is not to be passed up. Not only do you get a great guide, but you get to see a complete maltings floor in action. The work is still pretty labor-intensive and back-breaking. But you really can see the difference in the new grains and ones that have already been on the floor to germinate for a few days.

They also have a working cooperage on site where they reconstruct the casks used to age the whisky in. A huge percentage of them are casks made of American white oak used one time for bourbon. Others are port or sherry casks primarily used for finishing the whisky in for the last few months before bottling. Even though these coopers have modern machinery to assist them, it's still another labor intensive job.

Actually quite a lot of what goes on in a distillery is not unlike how it was 100 years ago. Apparently they used to give the men a dram of whisky at the start of their shift and one at the end of their shift. And if a job was particularly offensive or hard (ie: cleaning out the mash tuns) then they'd get another dram. Our tour guide seemed very sad when he told us that things haven't been done like that since the 80s. He's been in the business for 40 years and is playing tour guide as his retirement job.

When we went to Warehouse no24 to see some of the casks being stored there were three casks set aside. It seems that we had an opportunity to fill our own little bottle with cask-strength whisky. I told Steve that he couldn't pass that up. He got to drop the dog into the sherry butt cask and then fill up this little bottle from a funnel. All made of copper by the distillery coppersmith.

The tour ended with an extensive Balvenie whisky tasting (from the new make to a very expensive 30yr) in the old manager's office. We had the very pleasant company of an American couple from Atlanta, Georgia and an older couple from Sweden with their young college-aged son as interpreter. So if you're at all interested in how whisky's made then I highly recommend that you book this tour. It's pricey compared to all the other distillery tours, but this is by far the best experience and well worth the expense.