The one that did not get away

Here is Rae with the monster zucchini. Any of you who have had the pleasure of growning zucchini will know that one of the curious things about them is that they seem to be flowers and then finger sized little zucchinis and a week later they are have put on an exponential growth spurt and taken over half the vegie patch!

Since I got back home I have been watering my Zuchinis which are just about to mutate into monsters - I had better pick them tomorrow morning before they take over the neighbourhood.

Time to get back into the vegie patch. I made a a wonderful gardening date with my friend Marian and her daughter for the week after easter to help me tackle my community garden patch which looks like a scorched landscape at the moment - with a nice crop of weeds - how come they aways survive?

College Park Memoirs

I've been in College Park Maryland - a kind of outpost of Washington DC, but in another state for three days now. It has been a real eye opener. We spent yesterday touring the sites of DC - all the monuments and cemetaries. One thing I did not realise was how close the pentagon is to all the monuments and the white house - in fact, its about 1 minute flying time between the whitehouse and the pentagon for a 747, even though they are in different states. So every time an airplane took off from Ronald Regan airport and flew over, it was quite nerve wracking.


The outskirts of DC are kind of - well - square. All the buildings are square and many are red brick in a kind of colonial style. And even the new places are boxes - so South Parkesk in their shape and appearence. Tonight we commuted into town and went to a fantastic restaurant - Maggiano's in DC. The food was fantastic, and even though it was a pretty swish restaurant - it was only about $25 a head. We has vodka gnocchi with tomato and a spinach salad with blue cheese - so nice. We are going back next week.

Tomorrow we are off to Georgetown University, so that will be interesting. Lots of photo's of squirrels the last few days as they are so cute but apparently attack if you get too close.

Three days in S F

Copy of email to Kerry and Grant

I have had 3 days in San Francisco and I
have warmed to the place and its hills.

I keep meeting Aussies of course - this hotel is full of them. Actually it is a great little hotel - very inexpensive but very well kept, nice staff and a fabulous breakfast buffet so you can stock up for the day. Today it was pissing down rain and cold, but cleared this afternoon to a nice sunny but cold day. I walked in the rain to Lafayette park -
which is in the swish part of town near where I am staying, because the guidebook said it had great
views. All I saw was some soggy gum trees and a wet labardour. I walked down to the california st cable car and found on the way my favourite shop in the USA - wholefoods market - it just has organic everything - imagine an organic store the size of the average Coles or Safeway - no coke -
they have their own cola (organic I guess) and lots of nice stuff. You can even buy dinner there and eat it for a very good price. I think I will head there tonight as I suspect the next two weeks might be a little fast food filled.
On my cable car ride, I took the street car and I went down to the castro - which is the gay end of town, very nice spot. Then I went to the SF mueseum of modern art. It was, well, modern. The building is spectacular, but their art besides a few pieces was a little dissapointing. There were
some interactive exhibits which was good. They had a lot of video, and there was two side by side videos of Yoko Ono sitting on stage getting her dress chopped up in little pieces by the audience in
1965 and a more recent encore. That was actually very interesting. I was also a bit tired and not paying attention and I lost my possum fur hat - i think it was whisked away to be an exhibit.
You do notice some subtle differences between LA and San Francisco. Take for example the bums. In LA - they are polite and pretty clean. They have luggage and not shopping carts. They comb their hair when they get up from sleeping in the park in the morning and their clothing is clean. In San
Francisco, the bums are more like bums, they can be a little pushier, they nearly all have shopping trolleys stacked with their belongings, and they stuggle up and down the steep hills here and there.
The other night I stepped around a guy down at the wharf. He was sprawled across the pavement, asleep or unconcious, in fairly grubby condition with an empty bottle and a neatly written sign on cardboard. 'I need a hooker, please help' I'm not sure that is what he need.

Monterey and Pebble Beach

A big day today starting off with getting petrol - took me a while to figure out you have to pre pay here - and set off for the Monterey Aquarium. What a fantastic aquarium. It was set up in the early 1980's with the help of Mr & Mrs Packard of the Hewlett Packard fame with his millions earned from scientific calculators (well I know I donated at least $120 for one back then) and large computers. Well done Packards!

The stunning thing about this place is the otters - there are around 6 in all (all seem to be girl otters) and they are fantastic. They are big - probably about 1.5 metres with tail by my estimation. All are permanent residents due to behavioural problems (they go up to people when released) or health conditions. They did seem quite happy and jolly I must say, and the otter wranglers did appear to do lots of things to keep them entertained.

All of the exibits were outstanding, but the jellyfish were fantastic. Here are some of the Jellies I snapped.

In the afternoon, I hired a bike and road around the 17 mile drive to Pebble Beach - amazing houses and golf courses and fantastic beaches and rocks. Here is one of the tees on the Spanish Bay Golf Links