The sunsets this year are incredible.  This is our second year as residents of Paradise Village, and I remember the sunsets last year, so perhaps it isn't unusual for sunsets here to be spectacular.  We have three windows facing west, and often Margaret interrupts me in whatever task I am intent on finishing to say that I really must look at the sunset, and she is always right.  The sunset on any evening in autumn is worth stopping anything that is in progress to look... and to take a picture.

Outside the door that leads to the elevator is a strange cactus, one growing out of another parent cactus.  I stopped one day a couple of weeks ago and got a picture of this cactus, and I posted it on the BLOG.  Tonight I got it from another angle.  Enjoy!

Paradise Village is filled with Birds of Paradise blooming at their peak.  I am amazed at the natural designs of these flowers.  The colors are perfect.

Jerral and Margaret at Balboa Park.  A women was walking along as I was taking a picture of Margaret in front of a beautiful palm tree, and she asked if I'd like to be in the picture with the lovely lady.  Of course, I handed her my phone and here's the picture.

The other two picture are melaleuca tree images.  I don't remember if I'd ever made a picture of the whole tree, so I got it today.  This is the tree that makes abstract shapes whenever the trunk receives a wound. I got a picture of one of those as well.   

Margaret came into my study and asked if I had seen the deer and Christmas Tree on the back lawn.  I thought she had actually seen real deer ... and I didn't wonder what kind of Christmas tree she had seen.  She laughed at me when I asked, incredulously  where the deer might have come from.  She told me they were a Christmas decoration, and I knew I had to go out and take a picture.

Earlier in the day, I had been sitting in the doctor's waiting room admiring the photographs on the wall by a photographer, Robert Dunn... and I was reminded that somewhere in the world autumn was happening.  Dunn's photographs were of trees in a forest.  Wonderful!  I couldn't resist taking photos with my cell phone.  I know it's probably illegal to post some photographs by another photographer, so I found his name signed at the bottom of the prints and I borrowed  for my Blog.

Melaleuca Trees growing around San Diego are from Australia and the islands surrounding that place. I like the ambiguity of these fascinating plants.  The bark splits and peels and looks for all the world as if it is trying to becoming something else besides what it is.  On this Blog I've posted images of melaleuca trees in the area where I once lived, and now I've found another tree, in San Diego, that will probably provide many hours of inspection and will undoubtedly provide images for the BLOG.These trees continue to produce green leaves during the Autumn and December when other deciduous trees shed their leaves.  If the temperature fell only a few degrees below what is normal for this region, the trees would die.

Strange day... strange times.  I sat for awhile in our living room early this morning, and the living room was still not light.  Looking west toward the ocean, a bank of fog was rising, and I watched it all day as it gradually covered the area with dampness, but no rain yet.  On a trip out of Paradise Village I passed through the elevator room downstairs, and I saw the shadow of myself on the wall.  If we can cast a shadow, it means we are still alive.  Later in the day Margaret and I went for a walk through the area between the four main buildings of the residence area of Paradise Village.  Nobody has told the orchid trees that autumn is here and blooming trees are not supposed to be showing off at this time of the year.

Eric and Tiffany Johnson with Nina, Margaret and Irene, dinner at Paradise Village.  Julian was with his grandparents in Julian.  I took the photograph of the snail after I picked up the mail around 10 o'clock. I thought about saying something about life creeping on etc. but decided against it.

The Davids' backyard was a perfect place this afternoon for a Thanksgiving feast... It was a place where seven people, The Davids, Jeremy, two guests from Germany, Margaret and I met for a time of being thankful for the blessings of being alive in this place on the earth and for a wonderful afternoon lunch.  The Davids are vegetarians, so the menu included wonderful vegetable dishes.  Margaret cooked a turkey and some of us ate that.  The deserts included an amazing plume strudle, and a chocolate cream pie.  Family and friends together on a Thanksgiving afternoon are enough to include in our thoughts and our thanks those family and friends who are celebrating Thanksgiving somewhere else.

Margaret and I just came into the house from seeing the movie The Great Gatsby.  The F. Scott Fitzgerald story was made into an earlier movie, maybe fifty years ago, and this one was made in 2013 with Leonardo de Caprio as Gatsby.  I recommend it now with at least as much enthusiasm as when I recommended the novel to students in my senior English classes.  We saw it today in the Paradise Village theatre, and I sat wondering how all those (we) older people managed all that sex in a story.  I wonder how my students managed it.  Now I'm going to have to reread the novel to see if it is really as erotic as the movie made four years ago makes it.

I had set out the photo of dried grass to use as my photograph for today, and then I found another photograph that I think serves perfectly with the grass and the movie.  It is Christian Rohfls' nude.  I took this photograph last Friday when Margaret and I were on a docent tour of the museum.  I'm not going to try to explain why I think these two photographs go together with Fitzgerald's story.

I walked around Paradise Village today... after hearing about cold weather in other parts of the United States, and after a coolish start this morning, the temperature nudged up to 80 degrees this afternoon. The plants were happy... and I was happy.

I've been trying to think of something I can write about the sexual assault situation in our culture.  I can't get my mind around the situation.  First I can't figure out how someone can actually enjoy any experience that is forced, that is not wanted.  I'm not ready to write about what I think, perhaps because I don't know what I think.  I'll give it some more thought and see if I can get my thoughts down on this BLOG.

The sunset today may look like the one yesterday, but it isn't.  Today the colors are the same as yesterday and the clouds seem the same but they are not.  To look out the window toward the sea and see the sunset gloriously stretching across the sky above the water is an experience just for today.  I remember yesterday, but today is new and different.

In Balboa Park near a parking lot near the Plaza de Panama there are three trees growing close together that have been molested by dozens of people.  Names and slogans have been carved into the bark of the trees, and they stand as a display of man's stupidity and complete lack of appreciation for the beauty of nature.  I have given up making sense of the graphics on the trees.  It makes no sense.

The Thanksgiving Altar  is a reminder that the earth is full of things for which we can be grateful.  I stopped in to take the pictures of the altar with my phone and the sun was blazing outside, so it was difficult to adjust the image to get the details that reminded me of all the good things that surround me.  I was reminded of the sunset I could see outside our living room window just last night.  The natural world is full of beauty... changing constantly.

My garden is growing... six cabbages and five tomato plants.  I'll harvest the cabbages when they are ready, but the tomatoes may not make it... even in National City's mild climate.  

This morning we sat in the monthly lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art before we went on a docent tour of the sculpture garden led by Jim Helms.  Jim is a sculptor so he was the perfect person to lead the tour.  The lecture was mostly about Henry Moore, so we went out into the sculpture garden to take a close look at the Moore sculpture there.  Among several other important sculptures we saw works by Barbara Hepworth, George Rickey, and David Smith.  The museum is a jewel in San Diego's Balboa Park.

This is the agave season... actually in San Diego this plant thrives all year round.  I think there is no special season for it.  I have to go to the computer to add the color in the second image and make it interesting for use in my BLOG.  

This was a good day... and the images are typical of good days.  I don't know the name of this flower but I always notice when it blooms.  It is the flower of a succulent.  The other images are selfies/shadows.  As the sun was setting today and I was sitting at my computer, I looked at the closet door and saw myself... and snapped the picture with my iPhone.  I found another shadow/selfie from a couple of days ago, so I included it today as well.  The sunset was spectacular... and the orange rectangle is appropriate for today.