Mendocino Botanical garden

Memorial Day Mendocino Botanical Gardens

/ Bulldog Travels / 21 Comments

Yes, yes, I know.  I have posted about the Mendocino Botanical Gardens before.  But, it’s sort of become my muse.  (If I may humbly use that term.)  Right about the time I think I might start get tired of the place I go back and fall in love all over again.  We spent a four-day Memorial Day weekend up in Mendocino and spent the better part of an afternoon exploring the garden and enjoying the hummingbird wars, coastal breeze, roses, veggie garden, golden rod crab spiders (what?), and Dahlia buds.  As I sit in 100+ degree Sacramento heat this week I am channeling the coastal breeze and cooler weather from Mendocino wishing we never came home…

Golden Rod Crab Spider known to change its color based on if it is hanging out on a white or a yellow flower. Had to do a little research after spying this creepy lady. I can’t remember ever seeing one before. Hope never to see one in my house…
Another specimen I cannot remember seeing before with blue cones
Never get tired of Dahlias
Dahlia Baby
The garden has a good collection of public art that changes regularly
Mother Nature is creative in the interesting things she creates is she not?
Saved this little one who had flown in to a green house and couldn’t figure out how to fly out the door.
Never grow tired of this view

Check out other posts I have done on Mendocino here…

Flower Power – Mendocino Botanical Garden

/ Bulldog Travels / 34 Comments

I really enjoy camping up on the coast above Mendocino and Fort Bragg. One of my favorite things to do in the late summer early fall is to visit the Fort Bragg Botanical Gardens because the Dahlias are in bloom! The entire grounds are magnificent but the Dahlias are my favorite. I didn’t even know what a Dahlia was until about five years ago. Now I am obsessed with them even attempting to grow them in my own backyard. (Incidentally, Sacramento heat and my lack of a green thumb make them slightly less spectacular that Mendocino cool air and sunshine but I grow them nonetheless.)

I love photographing them. It gives me a reason to obsess over them even well after I am gone. I get to go through hundreds of photos choosing some of my favorites for light editing. I took these photos a few years ago but they are still some of my favorites. The vivid colors and strange shapes make them so interesting and alive to me.

On one visit to the gardens you can see that a lovely Hummingbird stopped by for a glamour shot. He hovered for me long enough for me to snap some shots over a bouquet of flowers.

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What does it say for your luck when you lose a 4-leaf clover you have found?

/ Bulldog Travels / 3 Comments

I am pretty sure the Irish Saints are shaking their head at me. My sweet husband and I were walking through a garden of large clovers. I was admiring them and asked my husband to find me a four leaf clover knowing that most people live their entire lives without finding one. No joke, he bends over and the first clover he picks is a giant 4-leaf clover of the most beautiful variety. He naturally thought this clover business was a piece of cake. I took a few photos of it and placed it in the pages of a book like it was my most prized possession. After arriving home I placed it within the pages of a nice hard backed book intending to frame it some day. I chose an important book that I love so I would never lose it. Well, guess what? I can’t remember which book I put it in and haven’t been able to find it now for going on two years. Ugh. Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid are surely rolling their eyes at me.

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