A Weekend Getaway!

Cormorants Visit Santee Lakes and Hang Out!
There is nothing like a weekend getaway to widen and relax one’s perspective.  We drove from Prescott AZ to Coronado Island CA and stayed at a friend’s lovely home.  The reason?  An early music concert by Concerto Koln http://www.concerto-koeln.de/home_welcome.php?lang=eng at Irwin M. Jacobs Qualcomm Hall in San Diego.  What an amazing evening.  The baroque music was exquisite and the hall, designed for the San Diego Symphony, was perfect for the instruments.  The evening’s highlight for me was  Vivaldi’s ‘Concerto for Recorder, Strings, and Continuo in C, RV 443’ with Cordula Breuer playing the Sopranino Recorder.  I had not seen or heard this instrument before.  Picture the recorder you played in grade school and make it 6” long.  It was amazing to watch and listen to an artist playing with her fingers literally flying.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorder
Another day we went birding at the Santee Lakes.  What a show.  http://www.santeelakes.com/  Padre Dam Municipal Water District built this area to show how wastewater can be used in recreation areas as it increases the water supply at no cost to the taxpayer.  The area is periodically toured by international and national urban planners, architects and government officials.  This is a beautiful area. 

Snowy Egret watches for fish

The Osprey and the egrets were touring the day we were there.  I watched an Osprey sit high in a tree watching for food.  He targeted a fish in the lake and swooped down, caught it and flew away with his lunch.  Talk about good eyesight!
 
Osprey checking out his options
  
Osprey Going in for his lunch

 
Tri-colored Blackbird
The great egret was just popping up along the rise with a fish he caught.  It took about 15 minutes for him to eat it.  And there were tri-colored blackbirds, ducks, snowy egrets and great heron walking around not very afraid of us humans.  So I’m sharing some of the highlights with you while I remember the relaxing getaway. 
Great Blue Heron

Great Egret with tiny fish











Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning As We Go!

Image
Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I beg...
Read more

Polymer Clay Conversation

Image
One of the polymer clay groups on FaceBook is 'Polymer Clay Collective'.  This is a group of artists working in polymer clay who share ideas and support each other.  I'm so glad to be a part.  A new feature of this group is the 'Polymer Clay Collective Conversations' where a different member answers a set  of questions.  I get to be first - the trailblazer! I hope you enjoy learning a little more about me and in two weeks I get to learn more about someone else. • Tell us a bit about where you live. I live in Prescott AZ right next to the national forest.   When I look out my studio windows, I often see large black ravens swooping between the pine trees.   Binoculars are always available for close viewing of our smaller forest birds.   You’ve probably read about the forest fires we have had in our area this summer.   The monsoon rains we are having are so welcome. • What do you do when you're not polymer claying? As of 2010, I...
Read more

I'm Back with New Pieces of Art Jewelry

Image
It’s been a while since my last post and while I missed writing them, I hope you also missed sharing my adventures!  Between a road trip to Berkeley and having painful (very painful) shoulder tendonitis my activities really slowed down.  Now I’M BACK!  Ready to explore new techniques and have fun. When I see a good tutorial about something new that catches my fancy, I buy it and eventually the day comes when I just have to try it.  Staci Louise Smith wrote a tutorial “Gold Rush: The Rustic Crackle Technique” for Craft Art Edu.  I loved the pictures of her necklaces and wanted to see what I could do.  If you like the crackle effect  on my pieces or want to try something new, check out her tutorial on   www.CraftArtEdu.com    They have good classes on many subjects. When I started following tutorials, I expected my pieces to look like the instructors.  That just did not happen and it is not the fault of the tutorial or ...
Read more