After a Father’s Day Zoom with my daughter, hiked to the top of Mare Island with Shea. We ran into my friend Stephen Hallet who happened to be hiking there at the same time. What a small world! Great minds think alike!
For the first time I hiked ALL the way up the hill to the point in the Glen Cove neighborhood of Vallejo where pme cam look down on the Carquinez Bridge and back at the toll plaza with Napa, Sonoma and Marin counties in one direction and Contra Costa in the other. Snoopy and Bonnie kept up incredibly well while tethered to each other on the tandem leash.
Very busy day in Vallejo (unusually so for a Sunday) but before hours of resting by the pool with the dogs, we did the Vallejo Garden Tour and was able to make a pit-stop at the Mare Island dock for this first annual event, a Bay Area Butterfly Festival. It was very well attended and I’m so proud of my friend Shani Simmons for helping to organize this with a team of dedicated nature fans!
Shea Grove and Greg Haretos are shown here with me as we took a bathroom break to stop by and show our support.
Another amazing tour of many Vallejo gardens. It was nice to relax by the pool afterward at my good friends’ house, but I made sure to tackle all ten! I am so glad Shea and Greg were able to join me in the adventures. It was also wonderful to run into Monique Louvigny, Don Osborne, Kevin Zimmer, Brenda Crawford and her wife Tonya, Ward Stewart, Jim Sotiros, Kristen Hannum-Gregory, power siblings David and Helen Cates, Nancy Bennett, and others while out and about (and I’m sure others I’ll recall later).
Pictures that Shea and Greg took:
Audrey THREE?!? Here in Glen Cove (Vallejo) this family noticed that out of this agave plant, a huge “arm” was extended like a dragon which rested on the branches of the tree in front of it. It first started growing in their front yard in December 2023, and has since bloomed, for the bloom to now rest on another branch. How cool is that?
Genius! The homeowner at this Vallejo Garden Tour location constructed this simple but completely animal-proof raised bed protectors that are like a car hood. Super lightweight and easy to open when one needs to work under the (transparent) hood, yet unreachable by the critters that run about.
Through the crack in the bottom of the metal gate at the front door, it just walked right in! I had to take out the screens of the large window upstairs and wait a few hours for it to find its own way out.
Everyone should have one of these.
This squirrel is hesitant at first, but then takes tiny pieces of bread right out of my hand numerous times this morning. I feel blessed to connect with animals like this. Years ago I was called an Alpaca Whisperer and many of you followed the doves nesting my front porch wreath last year.
Somebody must have been feeding this duck, because he basically walked up to me, and if I had more time on my way to rowing I would have reached out, but I didn’t have anything to offer him (and we’re probably not supposed to feed them). What a beautiful bird and a nice interaction…
