First! Ha!

Anyway, just wanted to say what gorgeous camera work! Wow! I've got a Cannon EOS 35mm and a lot of ambition, but I'm a hack compared to you!

Lovely shots! I especially liked cactus shot (with the cactus in the foreground, fruit in the background) The lighting, the subject, everything about that photo rocks.

Thank you for sharing these with us!

Everything is so green. Must be greener than usual. I had to remind myself what month it is.

Congrats on the EP! See, I post first and BOOM! There you are. Of course it probably stood on its own merits, but I'll just go ahead and take credit in my own heart anyway. You're welcome.

Lovely. I'll take a guess that this is near Ojai or somewhere east of San Diego...

Sensational! I'm definitely a fan of succulents. Can't wait for my peach and pear trees to blossom. They've already got buds on 'em.

I love your photography and the subjects you've chosen. Beautiful angels and perspectives. Thank you for sharing these, it's a taste of places I've never seen yet. Congratulations on the EP.
♥

Thanks, Doug - of course, these are only the best of the best! And the camera is nothing special, a Kodak EasyShare 2710, then I tweaked the contrast and cropped with free Picasa software. There are days when the perfect picture is just there - all you need to do is frame it up and snap the shutter, so to speak. (I used to get EP's all the time, back in the earlies on OS. Not so many of late, all the new competition.)
Anna - it's always pretty green in California during the winter, but they got mega-rain this year, so everything was just unbelievably lush.
Grace - Yep - North County: near Valley Center.

Great stuff, Sarge, and a well-deserved EP. Sigh. Spring's got to come someday, right?

beautiful- jonesing for Spring here, too

The big house folks will be the first on the news crying when the next fire comes. "Why didn't the governement save my possession from my own stupidity?" It's not a matter of "if," it is a matter of when for those fools. Hope there are still a few producing avo trees so you could enjoy them while you were there.

Lovely. That cactus plant is a prickly pear which has fruit too. Would love to have been there with you.

Beautiful...hope you had a nice visit : )

Great photos. Rated.

pretty! After never having been there, we went to CA the last two summers. Loved it.

Breathtaking photography!
Congrats on the EP.

I miss California. But I won't go back to live. Too many people, too much polution, too many shots fired- at people, and far too many cars driven by people who don't know how to drive except as if they were road warriors!

Reminds me of home, which is nearby (Fallbrook). Haven't been back in many, many years, but these photos brought back good memories...including the smell of the orange blossoms. Bittersweet memory for me. Thanks!

You capture the CA light beautifully in your photos. I feel like I saw the same sunrise from my own verandah here in Northern CA. Makes walking the dog so early in the morning a pleasure. Well done!

Thanks, B, and h-J - yes, spring will come. Over the last weekend in South Texas it was in the 70s, but we are due for a hard freeze and sleet this week. The saying is - if you don't like the weather here, wait for five minutes, it'll change.

kh333 - yes, the owners of the big house may moan a bit after the next fire, but seriously, everyone out where my parents lived know very well what they are up against. One of the things that the county insisted that everyone do (after the last one) was install large water storage tanks, and have some kind of hose apparatus. Dad tricked theirs out to look like a quaint Italian tower. If you look at the picture of the big house, you'll see that all the vegetation around it has been cleared away. Very likely, the next big fire will burn entirely around it - if they manage to keep the roof from catching fire by wetting it down.

Sheba M - yes, the cactus does have rather lovely pear-fruit. In Texas, you can get cactus-pear jam from them - and the grocery store sells bags of the tender and thin cactus-pads (spines removed!) cut into narrow slices as 'nopalillos'. Also, in cattle-country, during a drought, the ranch owners go out with blow-torches and burn off the spines so that the cattle can eat them.

Thanks, everyone - as a photog, I like to think I have a few mad skilz. And I forgot, until Beth mentioned it - the smell of orange and lemon blossoms. Really magical. I have some lemon trees in pots in Texas, but it just doesn't get to the same degree that it does when you have a whole orchard full of citrus trees in bloom.

OTO, there is the other evocative smell from a citrus orchard - that of the windfalls rotting on the muddy ground! (Some company came out with an air freshener scent a couple of years ago, which I just couldn't stand - because it smelt to me like rotting oranges!)

I particularily like the first pic/bird of paradise. Ours was nearly that size in a huge pot in a heated greenhouse up the garden, but the severe UK frosts just killed it the same night the heater failed.
Such a waste of such beauty.
Nice pics - thanks.

You're welcome, Creekend ... although you will probably begin sobbing when I tell you that my mother has several deep thickets and hedges of Bird of Paradise growing around the house ... outside, and un-sheltered by anything but the scrub live oaks