Sunset Open House

Do you get Sunset magazine? It is one of those indispensable home and garden magazines that is always useful and inspiring. Their headquarters is pretty close to me, and I got to go to their big open house Celebration Weekend event.
The reason I actually went this year was because my brother and sister-in-law and niece came up for a visit. My parents also came along for the fun. No pictures of the extremely cute niece and other family members as I forgot to ask them if they cared or not if I published them on my blog, whoops! Take it from me, my niece is way more interesting and way cuter than this stuff.
Anyways, here is a picture of part of the garden. I always love the gardening section in the magazine and was most excited about seeing the Sunset gardens.

Doesn't that just shimmer and glow, it really comes through in this picture. I'm going to try this in my front yard, because I don't think the deer will eat this sharp tough grass.

There wasn't too much to the gardens, which was kind of disappointing, I expected more in that department.There was a whole section of camping stuff, and I really loved this teardrop trailer.

An inadvertent self portrait! Doesn't it look so cozy in there?

This is kitchen is so well designed, really impressive.Speaking of kitchens, here is the test kitchen. We got to hear all about their setup, how they test the recipes, making sure to use equipment that normal folks have in their own home kitchens, and how the leftovers are quickly consumed by all the people who work at the magazine.

Most of the event was vendors, which wasn't too terribly exciting. I loved this rust metal spiral hanging lamp.

This gizmo was cool, you get four of these metal braces, slide in boards, and presto, a garden box!

One of the vendors was Tillamook cheese, isn't this the cutest? A squashed VW bus all tricked out in cheesy orange. We didn't get any samples because the line was super long.

It was fun to see where this magazine that I've long subscribed to is put together, and I'm glad I got to hang out with my family.

From Mushrooms Underfoot to Unexpected Turtles

A lovely Saturday afternoon was recently spent at Overfelt Gardens/Chinese Cultural Gardens in San Jose as I waited for my son to finish up at his Destination Imagination competition (yes! They won!). There were mushrooms a'plenty after all the winter rains.

At first I thought it was just the usual kind of city park, with some sculpture here and there.But then across the little pond I spotted this cool pavilion and realized it was something a bit more than just the usual park.

People were out enjoying the sunny day.

One of the founders of the garden and her daughter (The woman you can see there through the window) were there sweeping up and were kind enough to explain how the garden was founded and a lot about the symbolic meanings in the designs on the buildings and garden walls.

I wish I remembered it all so I could write it all down here. There was a lot about the elements, this was I believe air (see the clouds).I think this was the symbol for water (see the waves).

I particularly love this swirly wheel/sun design, it was something about the cycle of life and everything being one.The marble mama lion.Dragons on the roof tops.A painted ceiling in one of the small pavilions.Pretty designs on the ceiling and corners.

A beautiful gate to walk under.I noticed something in the corner of the gate as I walked under.A nest!

A great big statue of Confucius.

I like this picture of him where he is walking on the treetops.

Some interesting details in the marble base of a sundial.

The blossoms were popping out on a lot of the trees.

And finally, an unexpected turtle picture! I was taking a picture of the goose in the foreground with my zoom.

I didn't spot the turtle until I looked at the pictures on my computer.

Vision is a funny thing isn't it?

Cooperative Randomness

On the beach in Monterey, there is a ruin. I don't know if it is terribly old or not (by California standards that is!), or reallyeven a ruin, but it is one of the most interesting things on this particular beach. There are all kinds of tempting and tantilizing textures on the salt/water damaged wall. Unfortunately I was there at the wrong time of day to get photos of those textures (without getting wet that is.).

I happened to notice how different each photo I took, looked, depending on what the ocean was doing. A big part of how different this picture looks has to do with what position the waves are in at the moment the shutter snapped.

If I shortened my focus, then it was much more up to me how the picture would look.

But if I widened my view from the closeup.

Each and every picture looks different. Hey! A ship on the horizon.

I began to think about this idea of not having control over what I'm focusing on. I can't tell this subject to smile, or look this way, or to "stay". It isn't up to me, except to be in the moment and let the photo happen that will happen. This is much easier to stomach with digital photo taking of course!

I love the idea that the end result is not something I can control. It is out of my hands how very important elements of this composition look, so there is a beautiful randomness in the result. Let's call it: Cooperative Randomness.

And if you hang around long enough, of course the sunlight changes too. Which I also have nothing to do with. Which I am absolutely ok with. I have enough to be in charge of!

Just Jellyfish

An all-jellyfish edition for you today. From last Sunday's excursion to the dependably fabulous Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Note: Please excuse any missing "t's" as my t-key is not always working.

These have what looks like teeny neon lights running up and down the long sections. They move really quickly so they are harder to get a clear photo.

This doesn't look like a particularly organized animal does it? Reminds me of egg drop soup. I do however love the composition of this photo with the long curved strands off to the side. This could easily be extrapolated into a good art quilt that doesn't necessarily scream "JELLYFISH". There are just soooo many jellyfish quilts, it seems like the subject has been done almost to the point of overdone. Does the world need one more jellyfish quilt? Probably not. But that isn't how I make decisions on what to work on. And anyways, I don't think I've seen one done of this particular type. And since it doesn't look like a prototypical jellyfish (like the first photo in the post), I could see myself doing one.

So unreal and delicate and beautiful.

This series of four photos show the same group of jellies as they pulse open and closed, in and out, to move through the water.

Open.

Shut.

In-between.

I really like the way the lighting at the aquarium shows off these jellies. This composition is also effective to my eye, all the different curves, the way the space is divided up, the different angles made by the trailing tails.

I took this picture because it looked like they were really tangled up (more than usual) for good.

But no, they were fine after all.

Then my family had to drag me away from the jellyfish display area to the rest of the aquarium. I could just skip the rest of the fish really and just hang out with the jellyfish.