It's finally spring weather, which in Southern California means sunny, breezy, not too hot or cold, and no threat of rain.  A friend and I had talked about visiting the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad for some time.  We had driven past it, and had even scheduled such a visit -- three times we had to cancel for one reason or another.  We had scheduled a trip last week Monday, and cancelled because they close on Mondays, so this week we scheduled it for Wednesday.  It was a beautiful day, and the traffic was not bad -- we reached the area in time to have a nice leisurely lunch before heading to the museum.  Once inside, I did take one photo, but put the camera away -- the light was insufficient for natural light photos, and I don't like to disturb other people with flash photography inside a museum.  The result is a little blurry, since the camera was handheld and required a longer than usual exposure.  This shot gives an idea, though, of what we were to see for the next couple of hours in the museum.

The museum included many guitars and brass instruments, sprinkled with a few woodwinds and other instruments.  The instruments were displayed in sections of 30 year spans, beginning in the early 1800's, and in each section were short (1 minute) clips of recordings of the music of the era, tracing popular music through the decades.  It was fascinating, and well worth the time we spent there.

Directly across the street is the top of the Flower Fields.  We didn't spend the time or money to enter the fields this time, but this is the location where they grow ranunculus for flowers and for salable corms.  They plant the corms in rows of color, and at this time of year it is very spectacular.

Below the Flower Fields are an outlet mall, a restaurant row (where we ate lunch), and infrastructure for the cities of Carlsbad and San Diego.  The tower is part of a power plant.  Just below that and to the right is a new desalination plant which will provide 1/3 of the fresh water used by San Diego.  We drove past the plant, to see how bad it looks -- we could hardly see it from the main road a block or so away.  There are two low 'towers,' and on one side a fairly large lagoon provides the salt water for the plant.  It doesn't look bad at all!

In previous years, I have walked the fields, getting closer to the flowers, but have never taken a ride on the wagons -- after sitting in the car, and standing for some time at the museum, this looked tempting!

It was a wonderful spring day, and I hope now to do many more of these 'joyrides.'

When we get a lot of rain all at once, strange things happen.  One is that the retirement home I'm looking at lost about two months of construction time, all in about 3 days!  They are doing major grading in the hillside, but they had lined some "holes" with plastic to prevent pooling and flooding.  There was some pooling before the big rains.  They now are having to spend time re-compacting some of the earth, and turning a lot of soil to help it dry out!  It's all beautifully green, though, and I took a few more pictures last week to update:

The first two shots are the view from below the location of the complex.  On the left, there is a new road being built, linking this area to San Clemente and the waterfrong activities there (just a little south of Dana Point).

And the rest are of the area being graded.

For some of these photos, I was standing in a parking lot for a community park that will be used for horse shows, etc., and for other civic events.  The parking aisles are delineated by orange trees -- young trees at this point, but they grow quickly!  The hillsides are emerald green right now -- they are prettier than I remember for quite a while, and with more rain predicted for the coming week, they should stay beautiful for longer than usual!  It's a very pretty spring here right now!

After two months with at least a sprinkle of rain every day, the sun finally came out to play around the First of March!   When it did, it was apparent that the hills and any place where there had been brown grasses had turned green with all the rain.  I took the camera out for a ride, with the idea of taking green photos -- the green is a bright spring emerald green these days!  The locations of these photos are all places I've been many times before -- those who have followed me for any length of time will recognize them.

Looking over the edge at the canyon below.

At home on this particular day, the sky was a brilliant blue.  When I reached the coast highway, one side remained blue, and the other was shrouded in thick soupy fog!  The next two shots are of Dana Point Harbor from the top of the hill (can you see the breakwater in the right side of the next shot?).

And it wasn't possible to see the inland side of the marina!

In the spring after a rainy winter, we often see lots of wildflowers.  They usually begin with yellow daisies.