Color the Garden Purple!

Purple is IT!

Wysteria

Lady Bush Bells

The Artichoke is going gang-busters!

And the Butterfly is busy!

And TiTi and Isis are happy!

And now we are off to Santa Cruz!  See you tomorrow!

Another 3 Cups and Saucers

 Three more cups and saucers that were given to me by my Aunt:

 This one has fluted parts and is pretty in pink.  The rose design on the cup is done in gold.

 The bottom of the saucer has "38",  the cup has a couple smeared marks the could be "38".

 This is the "cross stitch" design.  

I especially like this one because I used to do a lot of counted cross stitch.

It reads "Royal Albert, Bone China, England, Petit Point China, Reg No. 778676

 This one just says "Little Lady" to me.

The bottom just says "Royal Albert, Bone China, England".

A Special Day at Ardenwood

Back at Ardenwood today!  It is a warm, a bit humid and cloudy today, threatening to rain this evening.  But it was perfect at the farm...

 I, AGAIN, tried to take pictures of the hummingbirds playing in the fountain.  AGAIN, they are too fast for a digital camera.  You can just see the smudge at the top of the water...that is the hummingbird.

 I did get a picture of the stellar jay.  Then after I left the fountain and watched from the porch, all sorts of birds came!  Yellow finches, robins with bright red tummies, and many other kinds had just waited until I left.

Oh, Well...I had tours to give!  And look at all the beautiful people waiting to go through the Patterson House.  They are from the East Bay Costume Guild enjoying a day at the park!  What a fun group of people!

Special Occasion!

The special occasion is our 51st wedding anniversary so we will be celebrating this evening! 


 We received a thank you note from our grandson and I was thinking that writing thank you notes is becoming a lost art. 

A lot of etiquette is going by the wayside in our modern life.  When riding on BART I have noticed elderly people can be standing and young able people don't even think of giving up their seats.

Archiving Cups and Saucers

My Aunt Edna had been given pieces of china through the years as gifts.  A lot of the cups and saucers were given to her by her relatives when she would go to Canada to visit them.  I'm sure they weren't given as something valuable, but sentimental of her visits.  Some of the cups were her mom's that her mom had recieved as gifts.  When we closed up my Aunt's household she gave me a lot of the pieces.

I love them all and I use them every so often for my morning tea.  It's a big deal for me to choose which one I will use that day!

So I am going to record them here.  I know my eldest daughter will get a kick out of trying to find out about the pieces.

The first three:

This blue one is one of my favorites,......what am I saying!  They are all my favorites, but this one has daisies and my grandmother's name was Daisy.  I think someone had given this one to my grandmother.

This pink one I use often too.  I love the flowers inside the cup, as well as on the saucer.   The little finger does go up when using this one!

 

This little tiny one is very thin and delicate and lightweight.  There are no marks anywhere.  The yellow in the picture is actually gold.

 
It is so thin it feels like you are holding an eggshell and you can see light through it.

I hate to even speculate on the history of this one.  It is hand painted for sure.  It really intrigues me.

Funeral Day

Our Son-in law's mother passed away and today is her funeral.

It is strange that no matter what age you are, when your last parent passes away you feel like you are now an orphan. 

When my father passed away and I had that feeling and felt I needed a rite of passage.  I decided I would drive  from California to Iowa to get in communion, so to speak, with my ancestors.  Of course, I didn't go alone.  Our three youngest children went with me, the oldest and my husband decided to fly out and meet us later.  We had quite a trip, had lots of fun and I felt that I had "grown up" and went through my "Rite".

It will be a time of adjustment and acceptance for our son-in-law and his family and hope they can get through it easily.

Father's Day Gift!

When Robert and Jen came over for High Tea on Father's Day they brought a little gift for Dad.

Robert and his Dad-in-law have gadget gifts in common.  So I thought I would share this gadget..... it makes Egg on a Stick!




 You plug it in, when it is hot add your egg and ham, veggies, whatever....

This one has egg and Canadian ham.
(you can see a finished one in the background)




You pour the mixture in, stick a stick in and wait.

After about 5 min your egg on a stick starts rising,  kind of creepy actually....

And there you go! an egg on a stick!  I guess it would be handy for commuters. 

Just don't forget to spay it with Pam before you add the egg mixture.

Thank you, Robert!
signed, Dad

A Hat Update!

We should have put Jen in costume!  She look so cute with hat #1 on!

I think I know what I am going to do with Hat #2.   Now I need to get some time to do it.  I am going to try to paint at Don Edwards for a bit. 

It is so amazing how busy things can get as soon as we hit April. 

Save the Date!!

A Walking Blog

We have been going on a long trip every other year and this year is an off year.  It is kind of bitter sweet in an off year.  The garden loves the extra attention, but the heart string kind of wish we were still traveling and seeing new sights.

Our first blog of a trip was:  http://sliceofamericatrip.blogspot.com/  That was quite a trip. We went half way across the USA.  6 kids 5 women on the first few days of the trip, then 4 kids, 3 women for the first half of the trip and then my son-in-law joined us for the last half of the trip.

Then last summer, the second blog ( sliceofamerica2.blogspot.com ) covered our great coast to coast trip with 4 kids, 3 women and George (for the first half) in one van and one RV for 40 days.  We had lots of adventures and weather!  Among other things it was the hottest recorded summer in history and we certainly experienced lots of different weather events, thank heavens, we were never in the worst parts at the worst time.  Coming from such a boring weather place, we have new respect for the rest of the country with their "exciting" weather.  Since when you visit a place you keep a bit of that place in your heart, we feel it when all these places are experiencing floods, tornados, fires, hurricans, etc.

This year my daughter has started a "Walking Blog".  It is to help keep interest in walking even though you are not actually see these places.  I'm using it with my treadmill.  I can attest to how good she can research interesting places, we saw things like giant fire hydrants and huge rocking chairs.
It is always interesting to see what she has come up with next.

 If you are interested, it's at:   http://sliceofajourney.blogspot.com

Fathers Day!

Happy Fathers Day!

We have and have had just great fathers in our family.  It's nice to have a special day just for them.

Our youngest daughter will be bringing little treats for our Father's Day Tea.  Wonder what she will bring this year!!!

UPDATE!!

We had a wonderful tea party! 

We even had a little science experiment with the gift Robert brought!

 And, I always love to bring out Aunt Edna's little china sets or teacups for tea.  I think we are going to have to have a tea party for Aunt Edna on her 99th birthday coming up!

Plein Air Artists at Don Edward's Wildlife Refuge

Today a group of artists will be painting at Don Edward's Wildlife Refuge in Newark, CA near the Dumbarton Bridge.  You can quietly watch them paint and who knows, maybe they will tell you where they are showing their work to buy.

June 12 and 19 - Don Edwards

Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge
1 Marshlands Rd
Fremont, CA 94555

A Mystery to the Small World

If you remember a post from a couple days ago ("What a small world") I told you about J W Tilden, an expert in butterflies, especially California butterflies.  Anyhow, J W Tilden still intriques me.  I assumed he had passed away, but then I thought, well, maybe not.  After all Aunt Edna is still going at 98 (her 99th birthday is on the 30th of this month!)  So, I decided to see if there was an obituary for him.  Darn it, there was, from 1988.  The first search I did came up with was that Mr. Tilden was editor of a newsletter for a Society for butterfly experts.  I found out that these collectors trade specimens like stamp collectors all over the world.  I guess I had never thought of that.  And they report on any variations of specimens they have found.   Well, then I came across this little mystery!

It is kind of small and for those that don't like to wear their reading glasses because it makes them look "old"....  The letter is from a Director of a laboratory in Mexico.  Basically it says that these butterflies have been turning up with "man-made" markings on their wings, a white paint on the ribs of the wings.  These have been sighted and several caught in 5 different states in Mexico.  The Director wants to know if any group in the USA are marking butterflies, he knows no groups in Mexico are and these butterflies are coming from the USA on the wind currents.  He thinks they may be coming in from some Southern US state.  They were all painted the same way so it is assumed it was done by the same person.  This letter was printed to find out if anyone knew the answer to the mystery.

Sorry, I don't know the end of the mystery!  Did they ever figure it out, did they catch the sneaky butterfly painter!  Did they find out why the butterflies were painted?

But I did find Mr. Tilden's obituary:

It went on for many pages and the friend wrote many of their adventures together that were very interesting. 

So, I guess I can put him to rest now.  His collections went to the Cal Berkely Academy of Sciences.  So now I am one of many volunteers inputting his very many specimens into a data base.

Volunteering

I was talking with a friend about the CALbug project and just what it was.  This kind of explains it:

And that brought up some of the volunteer projects I have participated in.  My husband and I volunteered in one way or another at the school for all the years the kids were there. 

I helped with conservation of the old vestments used in the 1700s at Mission San Jose.  The material the vestments were made of had been donated dresses from wealthy Spanish ladies.  I worked on a particularly beautiful vestment of silk flowered material.  It came with a note that Fr. Sierra had worn it.  The flowers were still bright and beautiful.

Ardenwood is one of my pet volunteer projects, as you can probably tell if you follow this blog at all!

I worked for over 2 years on a project called "Stardust-at-Home".  Wikipedia describes it as "Stardust@home is a citizen science project that encourages volunteers to search images for tiny interstellar dust impacts". That is a very interesting project.  

So "Notes from Nature" is my latest, so you will be seeing more bugs off and on.

As I am logging in the information my thoughts turn to the people that collected all these insects.  Did they go on all these trips just to look for bugs, or were they just going on trips and happened to pick up a few bugs on the way?  Did they just collect bugs when they saw them or did they collect a bug because it looked different than others they had seen.

These bug collectors seem to all know each other and even go on these collecting trips together.  They also know the scientific names for lots of plants.  And they really get around to lots of places!

By the way, I have done 687 records so far.  I do them while watching TV in the evening with my husband. 

What a small world!

I was just logging in a few bugs on CALbug (notesfromnature.org) and one of the collectors was J W Tilden.  We have a park north of us called Tilden Park, so I thought I would look up Mr Tilden and see if the park was named for him.   It turns out it wasn't named for him but Mr. J W Tilden was an expert in butterflies and wrote a bunch of books.  The butterfly I was logging in was collected on Mt. Hamilton, east of San Jose, CA, which I know well.  And....he lived on the same street as my Aunt Edna!!  In fact, she lived at 137 and he and his wife lived at 125 three houses down!!  Coincidence or what!!  I would just love to be able to talk to dear Aunt Edna about him.  I bet she and my uncle knew him and probably well.  They knew all their neighbors, especially the ones that had lived there a long time.

Anyhow, I hate Alzheimer's. 







I just think this beetle is really neat!  From Minnesota. I love it's designs.

More Pictures from Ardenwood

A few more pictures from Ardenwood:

That Catalpa tree was just 6 inches when I started as a docent at Ardenwood.

As I was leaving all sorts of braying, mooing and other noises were coming from the far pasture.  All the animals were lining up along the fence......And then I saw them, the guys were out to feed the animals!

Ardenwood Yesterday!

 What a beautiful day at Ardenwood yesterday!  Just a few views:

Just in case you need to tie up your horse.

The garden is doing well.

Must be wash day!  This is where the little ones learn how to wash clothes without electricity.

Wow! The lambs have grown a lot!

 The tool and equipment sheds have lots of examples of what was used on the farm over one hundred years ago.

And then, my favorite thing to do, watching the baby hummingbirds buzz the fountain and play in the water.  Can you see the hummer playing in the water at the top.  They actually get on top of the water and let the water push them up.   They are so cute and it frustrates me that it is so hard to take a picture of them with the digital camera....They have moved by the time the camera decides to click.