A visit to the Marriott Coronado Island Resort

If you are coming to San Diego for a romantic vacation, might I suggest booking the Marriott Coronado Island Resort?

View Larger Map

Along with the quaint cottages, every room has a view of water, and most rooms have a view of the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge and downtown San Diego across the bay. A late afternoon or early evening walk along the beach with a view of downtown San Diego is just, well, romantic!

Also, if anyone asks you where you can see flamingos, there are actually four places in San Diego. Most people think there are just three—the San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, and SeaWorld—but you can see more flamingos, as well as ducks, gulls, egrets, and herons, in the lagoon at the Marriott Coronado Island Resort.

In the Marriott courtyard, there is a small aviary with lots of cute little birds. In this first picture, I’m presuming daddy is on lookout duty while mommy is sitting inside taking care of the little ones.

The grounds are beautifully landscaped with ponds, streams, waterfalls, and plants:

Did you see the two sleeping mallards in that picture above?

If you do stay at the Marriott Coronado Island Resort, I hope you have a good time and that you’ll send me a postcard………….

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!

Creating a work of art with Photoshop plugins

I just discovered plugins for Photoshop CS6. My first plugin creation:

Lily of the Nile

Here is the original picture from which that one was created:

The original picture isn’t anything special, just a picture of Lily of the Nile flowers. Now the Photoshop plugin creation, well, I like it a lot.

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!

Purple, my wise old grandmother’s favorite color

The only picture I have of my wise old grandmother is the one above. You might deduce that my wise old grandmother’s favorite color was purple. You would be right. She never visited San Diego but I’m pretty sure that if she had, she would have loved it here, especially in May.

May is purple month in San Diego. The purple jacaranda trees are blooming….

the purple lilies of the Nile are blooming….

and the purple sea lavender are blooming.

I fell in love with sea lavender (Limonium sp.). just a couple of days after arriving in San Diego in April 1993.

Sea lavender is a unique plant because it can thrive in the poorest of soils, even salty, sandy ones. Thus it grows wild along the sandstone bluffs, along the freeways, and at the beaches:

It needs no extra watering other than what Mother and Father Nature provide when they cry over the injustices being done to the Earth by mankind [that’s an editorial comment].

Perhaps the uniquest (a word for my friend, Robin Coyle, to dissect) attribute of the sea lavender is the flower stalk, called a panicle or corymb. The flowers are very tiny but come bunched together by the thousands on the panicle. They are very dry and papery, making for excellent cut flowers because they will last a couple of months after cutting, or for dried flowers since they are 90% already dried.

I do take requests for blogging subjects, and this post on sea lavenders was inspired by Kimberly Konkol, whose blog is titled “Everlasting love of flowers.”

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!