We had a visit from Grandson Jeremy this afternoon... He was riding his new electric Motorcycle.  Wow!  What a machine!  What a young man.  When we look for a reason to be proud, we find it in people like Jeremy.  He is absolutely wonderful.  He has graduated from university (the University of California at Santa Cruz) and he has a job... and he does things right.

This afternoon Margaret and I went over to Parkview Memory Care Center to see about our friend Jim.  He fell this morning and hurt his arm.  He will take some time for healing, but we didn't stay to talk with him because we could see him in the dining room in an animated conversation with a friend.  It's important not to interrupt that kind of thing, so we slipped out without being seen.  The Hibiscus shrubs are in full bloom.  I know these photographs look exactly like those I posted earlier, but each is different from all others.  They remind me of the way we human beings are made.  I couldn't resist editing the yellow into purple for that one Blossom.  Thor joined us while we waited for the attendant to change Jim's bandages.

The new Park is finished and is finally open to residents.  Tomorrow when Jim and I go for a walk, we'll take our coffee to the gazebo where new furniture has been installed.

We were driving up 22nd Street in National City and suddenly the road played out.  A dead end sign
warned us that we couldn't go any farther.  A couple of Victorian houses caught our attention, and we realized that we were seeing National City the way it was over a century ago.  We were reminded that before there was Spanish style architecture in our area, the people who lived here came from another part of the U.S.

My friend Jim Fudge has changed from walking to being in a wheel chair.  He continues to get some exercise in his program, but the walker had become a hazard.  He fell often.  Jim is a very good man, a very good friend.  Today and every day I see the world differently when I am walking with him.  Today we saw the tall ornamental grass that lines the driveway at Parkview.  His remark about the size of the grass prompted me to look more closely at it.  A row of Bird of Paradise plants is captivating even without a bee burrowing into a part of the blossom.  Life is good... especially when seeing things that might be missed on an every day, ordinary, stroll along a road

From my walk with Jim Fudge this morning...  The Hibiscus shrub is irresistible, so I took a picture with my phone... than I took a pictures of a couple of the shrubs. OK, OK, I know I've been on a Hibiscus jag for at least a week.  I'll get over it.

Every morning I walk over to Parkview Memory Care facility to have a walk and coffee with my friend Jim Fudge, and some mornings we are greeted by a beautiful blond Lab Retriever.  The great dog seems to know Jim needs his attention, so he lies down near Jim's chair and waits for the hand that always comes to stroke his shoulder.  Thor is twelve years old which is about as old in Lab years as Jim's ninety-two.

When we need cheering up, Thor is glad to oblige.  He seems to know something about life that we humans refuse to acknowledge.  I haven't taken him outside the Parkview building specifically to see the bright flowers growing there, but he surely must see them on his way in with his companion, Melanie.  I would like to show him the energetic little flying insect I saw today in the bright red and yellow daisy blossom.  I feel certain that Thor would prefer to focus his attention on that flower and the bee resting there instead of staring at a stalk of spent seed husks that are left over from producing seeds that that will make next year's flowers.  I'm quite sure he would make Jim and me notice the new green shoot pushing insistently through the cluster of seed husks.

You may want to see the usual four to six photographs and skip the rest... all taken on a trip around San Diego Bay this afternoon.  Margaret and I were invited on the trip by Jay Garcia and Lyn Wheatley, and I couldn't resist taking lots of pictures, and then I couldn't resist putting sixteen of them on the BLOG.

Time changes people and places. Well, I guess that's the wrong way to say it.  People and places change over time. It's the stuff that happens to them and around them that changes them.   Margaret and I live in a community built for retired people.  "Retired People" is another way of saying it was built for people who are at the end of their lives... Oh, there I go again, avoiding that word old. They have all changed... changed a lot.  I became aware today that the city that I call home has also changed. Thirty years ago the skyline of San Diego was less bold, less insistent, less "city."  Today the place where I live is definitely a city.  I've got pictures from that time thirty years ago... and all through the years I have added to my collection of photographs. I am shocked when I look at the photographs of the city that I took when I was fifty-one years old.  One of the reasons I am glad to be the photographer on these excursions is that I don't have pictures of my 81-year-old self in the bunch...  The world has changed. I'll try to figure out how the photographer has changed.  I can deal with that later...

For today:  I'll focus on the sea gull that followed our ship this afternoon... and the old sailing boat that was showing off on the bay by firing a canon... and the sailboats in that special place near the airport... and the sea lions and seals and the birds on that floating barge way out near where the San Diego Bay runs into the Pacific Ocean... and then turning back and heading down south by Seaport Village and the great aircraft carrier that is as retired as I am... and then running under bridge and past the Navy ships in slips where they are being refitted, repaired, and readied for more action.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  San Diego is a wonderful place to live.

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“In the Victorian language of flowers, receiving a hibiscus was a compliment meaning you possessed delicate beauty.”  My friend Liz Cogdill sent this note after one of my hibiscus BLOG posts.  I realized at the moment I got the note how very fortunate I am to have such a friend as Liz.  I keep capturing pictures of the Hibiscus flowers at Paradise Village because they are such an important decorative element in our community.  All of the blossoms I have included in the past couple of weeks are on shrubs growing around Parkview Villa, a place devoted to the care of people who have memory problems.  My friend, Jim Fudge, has moved into Parkview recently and I go over every morning for a walk with him.  We see these flowers every day.  Harbison Drive, a block away from the back entrance to Paradise Village, is a part of National City with Hibiscus shrubs in full bloom along the street.  I can see why Victorians said the giving of a hibiscus to someone was a way of saying the person who received the gift "possessed delicate beauty."

The Hibiscus flower is definitely something that can be given as a gift.  The delictate flower on a stem that is used as a gift to be given, but two of my favorite plants are cacti... protected with barbs and thorns.  These two below have been planted in our new park.

Yesterday when I was on the hospital grounds behind Paradise Village, I got a look at the outside of our apartment that I hadn't been able to get from anywhere else.  The buildings at Paradise Village are named for trees, and the building, our building, on the right is named "Willows."  You'd think living in such a building would be too much like living in a hotel, but it isn't.  The hallways inside are thought of, at least by me, as streets.  Our apartment is the top one, second from the right in the picture above. The balcony is just big enough to accommodate sitting with coffee in the cool of the morning.  The window that looks out on the balcony is the one I see the world from in my office. My office, where I am typing this BLOG entry is really a second bedroom, but we have more need of an office so it's not a bedroom for us.   The window to the right of the balcony is the living room and kitchen.  The other window is the bedroom.

Looking west from the middle of Paradise Village, I've seen trees from a distance that I have wanted to see up close; so I went over to the hospital grounds between where I live and the hospital to check out the trees.  Wow!  What a collection of beautiful, unusual plants are there.  The tree that has puzzled me most, is the third one in today's pictures.  I don't know what the name of the tree is.  I don't know how old it is.  I can see that it has been cared for. When it began to lean to the point of almost falling, someone put a prop under it.   I've never seen anyone out trimming any of the plants.  The second photograph, the one just below this written piece, includes two trees, one a majestic pine and the other is some sort of fruit tree that seems to be struggling to be alive. Beyond the pine tree and the fruit tree you can see two Paradise Village buildings.  Margaret and I live in the farthest building.  The last picture is of a fig tree with lots of figs that will be ripe sometime next month.

THE PARK AT PARADISE VILLGE will soon be finished.  When it opens the sidewalks will be clean and the flowers and other plants will all be installed.  Where there is grass now, last week was raw earth.  I think it will be opened for use within a couple of weeks.  We live in a good place.

On my balcony this relatively small statuette stands in its place and always makes me feel more serene, makes the world which I can see from where I sit seem more peaceful.  I got him in Singapore, but I think he came to Singapore from India.  He has traveled with me for more than fifty years.  I am guessing this is the last place where he will stand in my life.  He is a comfort to me.

Nearby stands a larger Saint Francis.  I like him, too.