Neighborhood Superbloom - Carefully Tended or Beautiful Accident?

I've mentioned a few times now that we wanted to head to Antelope Valley to see this year's superbloom. It's not as crazy-good as 2019's epic superbloom (if you like wildflowers you'll definitely want to click that that link and the pages it links to to see pics and video) but apparently it's still reasonable. Except the two times we had an opportunity in our busy schedule the past several weeks the weather was off. By now it seems the best of the bloom has passed anyway. Except right here in my neighborhood!

There's this one house on the corner a few blocks away where the front yard is full of California Poppies and other colorful flowers. I pass it several days a week, depending on where I'm going. (There are basically 3 directions in/out of my neighborhood; this spot is on one of them.)



Early this week I noticed the flowers were starting to bloom like crazy, even though the weather was still cool and damp. "I should take an afternoon walk by there and make some photographs," I told myself. Then I forgot each of the next few days. Until Friday.

Friday I asked Hawk to take a walk with me after lunch. She was working from home Friday— and, as always, somewhat reluctant to take a break from work. "I want to walk by that yard with the crazy flowers," I explained. She was sold. And Friday was beautiful weather— clear, with afternoon temps in the 70s. (Not crazy-hot like Saturday.)



When we reached the house with all the flowers we were impressed to see it had more than just poppies. On the grass island in the sidewalk are all those asters, too. And in the yard are other flowers in addition to the poppies.



Is this yard a happy accident, carefully groomed, or both? We're not sure. The amount of overgrowth around the flowers implies that it's untended. Yet the density of wildflowers suggests that everything was planted and maintained... at least up until a certain point in time. The house seemed empty— no activity or furnishings visible through the windows, though we didn't step any closer than the public sidewalk to look— and we haven't seen anyone coming or going or in the yard on the occasions we've passed by.

To be continued....

Off to... Grand Cayman!

Grand Cayman Travelog #1
SFO United Club Lounge - Sun, 14 May 2023, 12:30pm

We're headed off to the Cayman Islands!

This is the president's club trip I won in February as recognition for excelling on my company's sales team last year. At the time it wasn't decided when or where "club" would be. Plans only firmed up four and a half weeks ago. That did throw a wrench into our plans to vacation on the beach in Florida 3 weeks ago. Why have two beach vacations 3 weeks apart? We canceled the Florida portion of that trip, replaced it with something else, and everything worked out beautifully. I hope this trip works out beautifully, too!

So far it's too early to tell how beautiful this trip will be. We're only 40 miles from home, at San Francisco airport. But we've got our heels up in the United Club Lounge, where I'm sipping on a gin & tonic. Alas it's not one of the premium gins I have at home. But as of right now things are looking good.

Headed to Grand Cayman, Late Night in Houston

Grand Cayman Travelog #2
SFO United Club Lounge - Mon, 15 May 2023, 12:15am

Our trip to what I hope will be an amazing visit to the Cayman Islands starts with a not-so-amazing night in Houston. We planned it that way..... Getting to Grand Cayman from California requires taking an overnight at some point in the trek. We chose instead of having a redeye flight to take a mid-afternoon departure on Sunday, stay in a hotel near Houston airport and get a real night's sleep, and continue onward in the morning. Alas, after what seemed like a good start to the trip at SFO early this afternoon everything else has sucked.

Our flight SFO-IAH was delayed. The delay was only 20 or 30 minutes, which wasn't so bad. With thunderstorms in Houston this afternoon other flights got delayed worse. But when we landed 20-30 minutes late so many flights were still stuck there that there wasn't a gate open. We sat on the tarmac for over an hour waiting for a gate to become available. And once on the ground we waited another hour for our hotel's pokey shuttle to come around. If we'd known it was going to be that slow we'd have taken an Uber. End result, instead of getting to our hotel around 9:15 and having time to grab a late dinner at a restaurant nearby before settling in for a reasonable night's sleep, we only got to the hotel a few minutes before midnight and had to make dinner from the prepackaged crap sold from the "pantry" next to the checkin desk. And it'll be a struggle to get even 5 hours of sleep tonight.

As we were waiting outside in the muggy evening air for the hotel shuttle it occurred to me, this is kind of how our last beach vacation started, too! Except then we got stuck in the airport overnight and had to fly to an airport 3 hours from our destination the next morning. The failure in common here is thunderstorms in the midwest. What this tells me is that we shouldn't rely on midwestern connections anytime near the summer when we actually want to get there. I'm thinking, fly nonstop or don't bother.

Will this trip get better soon? I sure hope so. Chances aren't looking great, though. The hotel's pokey slow shuttle is already booked up around the time we need to go to the airport tomorrow. I flat out refused to accept a 6am shuttle ride for a flight that's not 'til after 9:30. I'll call an Uber instead. Let's hope that isn't fucked up tomorrow. Oh, and there are thunderstorms in tomorrow morning's forecast, too. This may be yet-another beach vacation that gets off on the totally wrong foot.

Update: an hour after I posted this, things started slowly turning to shit.