Not much happening

Hi good folk, just taking it easy at the moment. We spent the remaining two days in Solvang helping around the garden. While Ros and Sam worked on the vegetable garden, Josh and I went over the reticulation system to get it ready for the hot, dry summer to come. There are no less than three reticulation controllers on the property, each with 6 stations, so yours truly wore out the path between the controllers to run them while Josh found problems and fixed them. The third controller down in the paddock area did not appear to do anything so we left that for another day.

Lunch on gazebo

We had lunch on the gazebo on Sunday as it was a beautiful day. Whilst we were sitting there enjoying the view, we could here this constant "clicking" noise. At first we couldn't work out what was making it, but finally I managed to capture a picture of what was making the sound.

Clicking bird

Here is the culprit, this beautiful little black-faced bird sitting in the nearby tree, clacking his bill together repeatedly. I call this my "Dances with Wolves" shot as one of the Indian characters in the movie was called Kicking Bird.

We guessed that the noise was some sort of mating call, because before long another bird joined him nearby.

Clicking bird's mate?

Here she is on the fence next to the tree he was in.

We've also had a few hummingbirds around but I haven't been quick enough to capture these fleeting, very fast birds.

Voodoo fuchsia

We bought Sam a lovely hanging basket full of fuchsias, which the store owner informed us was called a Voodoo Fuchsia. Not sure how the name originated, but it is beautiful just the same.

Japanese Maple

There's also a lovely Japanese maple tree next to the front door and I did some experimenting with
my camera's macro setting to get this close-up picture of the leaves in their glorious red spring colours.

On Monday morning we got up early as Josh had to drive down to L.A. for work, so we joined him for the drive back to Luke and Khristina's place.

We took it easy that day, did some washing, had naps to catch up on sleep then went out for tea with Joshua after he had finished work. He took us to a genuine Southern style restaurant where we had corn bread, I had a Pimento cheeseburger and Ros and Josh shared a whole southern-fried hen with spicy carrots and fried asparagus. I learnt later that night that southern fried food does NOT agree with my stomach and spent half the night sitting up, finally getting to sleep at about 4.30 am. The trouble with Luke and Khristina's apartment is their blinds are not the block out type, so as soon as the sun rises, the bedroom is blasted with light. It's fortunate that we are on Summer time here, so the sun doesn't rise till 5.30 am. Anyway, I'll be having an afternoon nap to catch up on some sleep before Luke and Khristina return from New Orleans tonight