They’re everywhere! They’re everywhere!

As much as I love going to the San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, and SeaWorld, there’s still nothing like seeing wildlife in the wild. Except I’m pretty sure that I would not want to see a mountain lion mommy and her little one while I was out hiking by myself. Nonetheless……….

I remember when I stumbled upon my first Canada Goose here in San Diego in 1996. I thought the poor thing had a serious deficiency in its map-reading skills (GPS wasn’t on the scene yet). Thirteen years later and I know that the Canada Goose is resident in all the lower 48 States as well as Canada.

In the 38 years I lived in Texas, I never saw a Canada Goose in the wild, yet the whole state is covered with “I live here in the Winter” blue in my National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. San Diego is covered in the same winter blue, but I can tell you that there are many Canada Geese that live here year round, such as the two in the following flash video. They have been here for several years, rain or shine, hot or cold, winter or summer:

I suspect the same is true up in the Los Angeles area. It definitely is not winter in L.A. yet when I was at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia a few days ago for my 19th anniversary, the only bird more prevalent than the peacock was the Canada Goose.

Following are three flash videos of the Canada Geese at the L.A. Arboretum, including two little babies with mommy and daddy.

Remember that birds don’t have nationalities, so the plural of Canada Goose is Canada Geese, not Canadian Geese.

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National Butterfly Awareness Day is Saturday, June 1

Saturday, June 1, is National Butterfly Awareness Day.

There are 265 species of butterflies that call California home. The queen of these butterflies is the monarch (Danaus plexippus) .

Monarch

I caught a little wormy
A-crawlin’ up a tree.
He wiggled here
He wiggled there
He wiggled right at me.
I put him in a shoebox
And told him “Stay right there.”
But when I opened up the box
A butterfly was there.
I don’t know how it happened
I couldn’t if I tried
‘Cause only Mother Nature
Can make a butterfly.
(Author unknown)

I just discovered that up in Encinitas, at 450 Ocean View Avenue, is The Monarch Program.

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That’s where I’m going on Saturday! They have a 1200-square foot vivarium there. And they’ve been there since 1990! I never knew!

If you happen to be in Balboa Park, check out the two large milkweed plants at the two entrances to the Botanic Building. Monarch butterflies love milkweeds, even needing them for their mere survival, and there are always a couple of butterflies, some caterpillars, and some chrysalises on the bushes. That’s where the second and third pictures above and the final two pictures were taken.

Trivia:

It wasn’t until 1975 that scientists discovered the overwintering sites in central Mexico. At that time, they found a butterfly that had been tagged in Ontario, Canada. There are about 210 overwintering sites in California, with the main one being Pacific Grove, which has taken on the moniker Butterfly Town USA.

The monarch butterfly is the official insect or butterfly for Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, Vermont, and West Virginia.

There are three overwintering sites in San Diego County: Grape Street Park in Balboa Park, Presidio Park in Old Town, and the UCSD Coast Site on Azul Street. The best time to see these overwintering monarchs is in November, December, and January.

I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post!

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Grand opening for the new Lemon Grove library

San Diego is building a new central library.

The citizens voted it down several times because (1) it was too expensive. (2) people don’t go to libraries anymore because of the Internet, Google, Wikipedia……, and (3) books are so last decade.

Of course, a great City Council will find a way to do things even when the public says no. I mean, who knows better, a Council of Twelve or 60% of the voters? I’m thinking Council of Twelve………………

You can see some pictures of the new San Diego library here: America’s second largest dome is nearing completion. At the time I wrote that post, the new central library was supposed to open in late March or early April 2013. Here it is May 30, and I think the opening has been pushed back to August or so.

But this post isn’t about the new San Diego library. Instead, it’s about the new Lemon Grove library. Lemon Grove is just south of me in La Mesa, and the new Lemon Grove library is about two miles from me. It was supposed to open on June 1, 2013. Unfortunately, it opened early, on May 23. Thus they took a page from retail and called it a soft opening. The official grand opening will be Saturday.

Since I am not going to make the official grand opening, I went over yesterday to have a little look-see. I was impressed. I’m really happy to see that libraries are remaking themselves so that they will still be relevant decades from now — books, audio books, DVDs, CDs, computers………….

The library is very bright and open with natural light streaming in from walls of arched windows and lending itself to not being stuffy like so many libraries. At nearly 13,000 square feet, the Mission-style library features a grand staircase entry, Friends of the Lemon Grove Library bookstore, a computer room, project rooms, and a new community room.

The middle school campus of the Lemon Grove Academy for the Sciences and Humanities is connected to the library on one side. During school hours, children have their own private entrance into the library. How cool is that?!!

The new library is located at 3001 School Lane. Kinda makes sense. The Grand Opening celebration will be Saturday, June 1, at 10:00 a.m.

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I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and since I love books
I approve this post!

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
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Pasadena City Hall

There’s no doubt that most states have beautiful state capitol buildings.

When one gets down to the county and city level, the buildings tend to be somewhat nondescript with little non-functional beauty.

Such is not the case with the cities of San Francisco and Pasadena, and when I went to Pasadena last weekend, one of my goals was to go see Pasadena City Hall.

Successful goal!

If you’re thinking that Pasadena sounds familiar but you’re not quite sure why, it is the city that hosts the Rose Bowl Parade and the Rose Bowl football game each year. Great place to go spend a little time relaxing!

Pasadena’s city hall was completed on December 27, 1927, at a cost of $1.3 million. It is, perhaps, the best known example of the City Beautiful movement of the 1920s.

Bakewell and Brown, an architecture firm in San Francisco, designed the building, incorporating Mediterranean Revival Style and Spanish Colonial Revival Style architecture.

The City Hall courtyard was used in the 1995 movie “A Walk in the Clouds” to portray a Napa Valley town square. It was used as an embassy in the “Mission: Impossible” TV series, and a villa in “The Great Dictator,” a 1940 Oscar-nominated film starring Charlie Chaplin.

Pasadena City Hall serves as the city hall of fictional Pawnee, Indiana, in the TV show “Parks and Recreation,” and the dome is visible through the window of the main characters’ apartment building in the TV show “The Big Bang Theory.”

Rising six stories above the street, City Hall is 361′ x 242′ with a dome that is 26′ tall and 54′ in diameter. It has 235 rooms and covers over 170,000 square feet. The Civic Center District, which includes City Hall, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

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Just passing through

When Jim and I travel, we usually try to visit aquariums, zoos, gardens, and university campuses. I also try to sneak in a visit to a place having something to do with trains.

When we went to Los Angeles this past Sunday for our 19th anniversary, our main destiny was the Los Angeles Arboretum & Botanical Garden. Afterwards, we went in search of Pasadena City Hall (the second most beautiful City Hall I’ve ever seen, behind San Francisco), the Rose Bowl, and the old Santa Fe Depot in Pasadena. We found City Hall and the Rose Bowl, but, sadly, never found the old Santa Fe Depot.

According to one site that I found after getting home, the Santa Fe Depot was absorbed into the new station and was “rehabilitated to the Secretary of Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties.” Ha! Anything but! See for yourself at Pasadena Views.

Jim and I walked around for about 30 minutes looking for the station, or its remnants, or maybe an address where it had been moved. While we never found it, I did get a couple of good flash videos of the Metro trains. The second one is my favorite.

I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

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Los Angeles Arboretum — Gone to the birds

When Jim went to bed Saturday night (he goes to bed much earlier than me), he told me we were going to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for our 19th anniversary.

When Jim got up Sunday morning (he gets up much later than me), he told me we were going to the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia (next to Pasadena) for our 19th anniversary.

I guess he had a dream…………..

The Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden (herafter, LACA) comprises 127 acres whereas our San Diego Botanic Garden is 37 acres. Of course, we have the San Diego Zoo, also an internationally recognized Botanic Garden, at 100 acres, so there…………..

LACA had a huge Australia garden, probably covering half of the arboretum. That’s about 60 acres. Much of our Southern California climate is very similar to Australia, and Australian native vegetation does exceedingly well here. Walk through Balboa Park here, though, at 1,200 acres, and you’ll see everything in LACA’s Australia garden.

One thing that LACA had that San Diego Botanic Garden does not have is birds. Particularly Peafowl and Canada Geese. More than you can shake a stick at, and if you were to shake a stick at them, some might take the stick out of your hands!

I think if I were around Peafowl  (remember that male Peafowl are Peacocks and female Peafowl are Peahens) more often, they could easily become my favorite bird. They are so much fun to watch.

Following are 15 pictures and 5 flash videos of the Peafowl at LACA. Be sure to watch the last video if you don’t do anything else here today; he’s a little tease! The 15 pictures are of 15 different birds.

Lastly, I would like to dedicate this post to my blogging friend Julie, her husband Anthony, and their son Ming (jmgoyder) in Australia. They are the only ones I know who might have more Peafowl than the Los Angeles County Arboretum.

Peacock (male Peafowl) walking the grounds

Mom and baby Peafowl

Peacock jumping from tree to fence

Peahen giving herself a dirt bath

Peacock showing off

I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
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James Frimmer, Realtor
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Happy anniversary to……….me!

Today is the 19th anniversary of Jim and me meeting. I was working in Detroit as a consultant in the wireless telecommunications industry. My client flew me home to San Diego every other week, and Memorial Day weekend in 1994 was my second trip home that May. I took two days of PTO (paid time off) so I could come home Wednesday night and go to the Men’s Coming Out Support Group at the Gay & Lesbian Center of San Diego, which is where Jim and I met. Imagine what might not have happened if I had not used those two days of PTO!

Jim and I are going to Pasadena today, mainly to visit the Norton Simon Museum but I’m sure we’ll also get to the Rose Bowl, Pasadena City Hall, and the Pasadena Railroad Station. I was last at the Rose Bowl in 1978. That’s when I found out that it had 77 rows of seats, a great number since I was Class of ’77 at Texas A&M University (Aggies will understand that).

My neighbors across the street are going to keep an eye on our place while we’re gone, as well as come in a couple of times to check on Zoey the Cool Cat. Sure, Zoey the Cool Cat will miss us, but she’ll get over it as soon as I get back and give her food and tummy rubs, and let her sleep on me.

I won’t be able to make it to the San Diego Zoo today, so I’ll let y’all go for me. Have fun!

Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus)
The largest of all the kangaroos
and the largest mammal native to Australia.

Masai Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis tippelskirchi)
The tallest land mammal

Sleeping mama Jaguar (Panthera onca)
The largest feline in the Western hemisphere.
This one has two cubs that are each a year old.

Meerkat (Suricata suricatta)
How come all these animals are sleeping?
Must be nice to sleep all day.

California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus)
The largest North American land bird.

Dromedary Camel (Camelus dromedarius)
Camel poop makes great fertilizer and fuel!
(Again with the sleeping animals!)

Mexican Fireleg Tarantula (Brachypelma boehmei)
Gets to six inches in size and
flicks barbed bristles (called urticating hairs) when irritated.

Sleeping(!) Guanaco (Lama guanicoe)
Guanaco spit when threatened.

Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris)
Mama and two little ones.
The largest rodent in the world.

Eating Jaguar
This is one of the cubs from mommy above.

Female African Lion (Panthera leo)
Sleeping. Duh.
Second-largest living cat; tigers are bigger.

Maned Wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus)
Nickname is “skunk wolf” because its mane has a distinctive odor.

Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus)
Sleeping, of course.
The polar bear was the mascot of the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada.

The End

I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

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I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

San Diego Zoo’s new Australian Outback exhibit

Yeah! The koalas are back in force at the San Diego Zoo! Most of them have been missing for almost 18 months while their old 1930s exhibit was destroyed and a new, bigger, and more beautiful exhibit was built for the little cuties.

The new Australian Outback opened to fanfare and news cameras at 9:30 a.m. yesterday after 30 minutes of speeches and a really cool dance and rhythm presentation by two Aboriginal Australians who flew into San Diego especially for the grand opening. I got a short video of the two of them:

Many schools had made arrangement for classes to visit the Zoo yesterday, and you can guess where they all headed. I’ve never seen so many school busses and children in all my life.

Following are a few pictures of the new Australian Outback.

I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

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I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

San Diego’s Little Italy

At last count (this morning), 120 neighborhoods make up the City of San Diego. That’s 19 more than the last time I counted about five years ago. Some are residential communities while others are business communities or mixed use communities. One of the more vibrant mixed use communities is Little Italy, a wonderful collection of residences, restaurants, and especially home design and arts businesses.

Little Italy was an Italian fishing neighborhood founded in the mid-19th century and thriving through the 1970s, serving the tuna fishing fleet and canning industry in San Diego, at that time the tuna capital of the western United States. Pacific Tuna Canning Company, the largest, was founded in 1911, and by the mid-1930s, canneries employed more than a thousand people. Sadly, foreign competition and rising costs caused the last of the canneries to close in the early 1980s.

Today it’s a neighboorhod full of life, seemingly 24/7 — it’s the only place I’ve found where I can eat out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I have yet to eat at a bad Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Along with great Italian food, Little Italy has a reputation for having fun. Annual events include:

• Little Italy Carnevale on the Saturday before Mardi Gras
• ArtWalk in April (the largest art event on the West Coast with over 120,000 attending each year)
• Gran Fondo Colnago San Diego, the “Big Ride” where 3,000 cyclists start and end under the Little Italy sign
• Sicilian Festival in May
• Taste of Little Italy in May and November (if you ever go to one you’ll come home 20 pounds heavier)
• Labor Day Stickball Tournament in September
• Little Italy Fiesta in October (the largest Italian festival outside of New York City)
• Bulls of St. Agata Charge Little Italy in October — see more than 50 Lamborghinis on the streets of Little Italy
• Little Italy Christmas Village and Tree Lighting in December where you can see Santa riding in historic Fire Engine #3 from the San Diego Firehouse Museum located in Little Italy.

Little Italy Mercato is every Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. There you can find freshly caught fish, locally grown fruits and vegetables, pastries from local bakeries, and, of course, art from local artists.

The Little Italy art scene is like no other, and that’s where I found myself late last month, at the Little Italy Art Walk.

I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

They’re baaaaaaaaack!

Several years ago I was driving down the freeway at 100 90 80 70 65 miles per hour on Interstate 8. As I came around a long curve into the East County environs, I was greeted by a hillside full of goats.

As I zoomed by them, paying more attention to the traffic than the goats, I thought maybe a truck transporting goats had overturned or something since this was not an area where you normally would see a herd of goats. I took the next exit and went back to find the goats. As you can see by the picture, the goats are in a makeshift pen. Several days later I found out what the goats were doing. They are part of a fire mitigation team.

I took the Fire Mitigation Team picture this morning because — guess what? — yes, the goats are back! Previously they were in El Cajon. This time they are in Lemon Grove on the hillside below Lawton Drive:

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The goats will spend several days on the hillside doing what goats seem to do best: eating! On steep hillsides where it is not practical to use mechanical equipment to clear brush, the goats do an extremely good job and are actually less expensive than having people go out there to try to clear a hillside.

The Lawton Drive hillside covers about seven acres. Here’s what it looked like on May 16 when I found out the goats were coming:

And here are the goats early this morning in that exact location on the hillside:

That’s after just one day of goats chomping on the brush, mostly oat grass, mustard weed, and tumbleweed.

After finishing these seven acres, the fire fuel-munching goats are scheduled to clear four acres near 6800 Central Avenue in Lemon Grove.

The goats are managed by Environmental Land Management of San Diego.

The fire season so far has been worse than expected, so if you have a difficult hillside that you need to clear in order to comply with San Diego County’s defensible space law, contact Environmental Land Management. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help, and the goats are so much more fun to watch than a bunch of people with machinery stirring up the dust and making noise.

I’m Zoey the Cool Cat,
and I approve this post.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!