In the Linda's Birthday blog post, I wrote that I didn't have good pictures of the Banana Bay Group. Fortunately, my friend Natalie helped me out. Here are a couple pictures. I'm not going to try to name the people. If you are in it you know everyone. If you are not in it, it just won't matter!
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| Party at the Banana Bay Point |
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| Banana Bay Friends - Create a cocktail competition |
While I was at Rebecca's, she showed me her spiraling machine. She made some spiraled golden beets for us. They were great! She also made some spiraled sweet potatoes fries in her Instapot. It's a great way to do vegetables. I might need one of these.
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| Golden Beets Spiralized |
Rebecca also had a food processor she was no longer using. She suggested I take it and try it. I thought it might be a pain to clean but might as well try it. I decided to try it on my cucumber salad. I needed to chop the cucumbers, green onions and roasted red peppers. It worked great. And, it actually isn't that hard to clean. It is a lot easier than chopping things up.
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| My "New" food processor from Rebecca |
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| Cucumber Salad |
I called Wendy one morning to see what was going on. She said Matt was out running and she was going to start some serious trimming of the bushes in front of the house to surprise him. She also said I should feel free to come help! These are the same bushes I trimmed off of the driveway, but I didn't do the center or along the sidewalk. They were getting quite out of control. We ended up with a pretty good sized pile of green waste! The yard looked very nice when we finished and Matt was impressed.
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| Trimmings |
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| Wendy & Matt's front yard |
A few days later Matt became quite ambitious. He decided to trim the massive Bird of Paradise Plant behind the house.
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| Giant Bird of Paradise Plant from the front. It's behind the house above the garage door. The house you see is on the hill behind their house. |
Wendy and I spent a lot of time and effort digging a hole and planting the Giant Bird of Paradise, which was about 8 feet tall at the time. Now it is easy to see why the name, Giant Bird of Paradise! It's a very fun plant. When grilling I feel like I am in a rain forest. Over time some of the leaves turn yellow and die. In addition, the blossoms become quite large but unattractive as they shrivel. So Matt went to work.
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| I held the 8 foot step ladder while Matt did the work. |
He thought he was closing in on finishing when I said, "I think you can get some of those other yellow leaves from the roof. He agreed!
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| Matt on the roof trimming in earnest! |
When he finished it looked great. Notice the barbecue grill beneath the plant leaves.
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| Trimming finished, except for cleanup |
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| Trimming Debris |
Picture with me for a size perspective. The Giant bird of Paradise is 25 to 30 feet tall! Wendy and I planted it about 15 years ago.
While cleaning up the debris, Matt went over to a dead stump that had been dead for quite a while. He started pushing on it to see how difficult it would be to take out. Surprisingly it just fell over! One more project completed. And a bonus for Rebecca, Matt suggested we cut it up and give it to Rebecca for her fire pit! I'm certain I will also enjoy it.
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| Mighty Matt felled the stump with one push! |
I finally finished the puzzle Wendy brought back from Colorado! The sand and blue water were tough but the animals were fun and went together pretty easily. I kept trying to figure out where the one white piece should go. After finishing the puzzle, I discovered it didn't fit anywhere!
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| Completed Puzzle |
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| Puzzle piece that didn't fit anywhere |
Wendy and I have been making Type One (Carol Tuttle) T-shirts for me. Type One colors are pure color, plus white. No black or solid gray. I am a Type One. I am finding I really do enjoy wearing the bright colors and Type One pattern shirts. Type One patterns display animated shapes, random placement, rounded shapes and high movement. Her Cricut machine works great for cutting out iron on vinyl and we found the pure color T-shirts at Michael's.
Here are the first two we made for me. I decided we needed more frogs for the second shirt. Obviously, I like tree frogs!
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| First Attempt |
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| Second Attempt |
I had a dentist appointment, so of course I wore one of my new T shirts. It was a hit. My dentist told me she had a therapy dog I should meet before I left. Talk about cute and friendly! It's actually one of the staff member's new puppy. I wanted to take him home. (After he's fully trained of course.)
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| Puppy at Dentist office |
I received a call from Craig. He suggested I come up for a visit, help him change a couple bike tires and tubes, and then go for a bike ride. Sounded good. We had the tires changed in short order and thanks to Matt's phone assistance, had the tread going in the correct direction.
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| Steve with his new bike and Craig |
We went for a long bike ride along the Doheny creek to the ocean. Doheny Creek Map If you look at the map and enlarge it you'll see the marina we rode to.
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| The creek exit to the ocean |
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| Trawler similar to Yesterday's Dream anchored in Dana Point Harbor |
Craig explained that there will be a steady stream of boats coming south on their way to Mexico for the winter. I wonder how the coronavirus will impact that. He said many of the boats are typically coming from Canada.
I spotted three interesting boats that had extremely long bow sprits (walkways). I asked Craig what they were for. He explained that the walkway would be lowered at sea and a fisherman would walk out to the front to try to spear bill fish while cruising up on them. I think I prefer a fishing pole!
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| Fishing boats with very long bow sprits raised in the air |
It seemed like the ride back was a lot longer. It ended up being about a three hour trip. By the time we returned we had just enough time for a shower before Happy Hour! Sitting on their patio is very relaxing, enjoying the humming birds that come by. I believe I see a hummingbird T shirt in my future!
Karen's cherry tomato plant is completely out of control. It has grown way out of the garden and is now taking over part of the lawn by the putting green. The tomatoes are delicious and more than plentiful.
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| All the vines on the grass are cherry tomatoes |
Craig and Karen went to work on supper. Pulled pork sandwiches with baked beans! Excellent. Craig had some leftover cookie dough from a grand kids visit, so he made chocolate chip cookies for a television dessert. As Karen said, "Don't ever plan on losing weight when you come here."
We started talking about Game of Thrones and it had been a long time since Craig and Karen had watched it. We decided to watch the final two episodes. It went kind of late for us but we only had to wake Karen up once!
Craig and I decided on a hike instead of another bike ride for the morning. Both are enjoyable and there are numerous trails. Craig recommended the Peppertree Trail this time. It had some elevation, but surprisingly, a lot of shade. There was a great view in the distance of the Saddleback mountains, the highest in the area at about 5,000 feet. Compared to the last two hikes, this hike was pretty easy.
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| Craig on Peppertree Trail |
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| Saddleback Mts. in the distance |
The trail wound between some very nice homes. In addition, it provided a view of some spectacular homes. One is for sale at $11,000,000. I couldn't get a good picture of it but many of the homes at this elevation are really something! The way the trails go I could only get clear pictures of a few but you'll get the idea.
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| This is all one property with beautiful landscaping |
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| This is all one house |
This was not a loop trail so we decided to just backtrack instead of taking a trail down to the highway. There are sidewalks along the highway, but the walk on the trail was much nicer. Along the way we passed a few horses. Some of these homes have large enough properties that they are allowed to have horses. There are also boarding stables and horses are quite popular.
The hiking trip ended up being about three hours, part of that a sight seeing drive in the area. We had some good sandwiches for lunch and I exercised restraint by turning down the root beer float! The ride home was very easy with very little traffic. All in all another great visit with Karen and Craig.
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