♣ the Bootstrap Sunday 'Scapes ♣ April 15, 2012

What a fine palet of colors. I like the blues and greens accented by the bits of red.

Is that ice on the river and ice and snow on the flat roofs in the foreground? If it's ice they have a roof drainage/slope problem. Just my architectural engineering speaking here of course.

Piggly Wiggly was the City planner way back when. He followed the town dog, wobbly willy in laying out the streets and lot lines. Not at all like boring Burbank, Ca. I like it.
--
Dave
No thought exists without an image. Socrates
http://whaleshark.smugmug.com

Hi BJ

These are wonderful pictures that you got from your E-1. Especially Nr. 2 is a beauty to my eyes. It just draws me into the scenery. And of course the colors are great.
Thanks for grabbing it out and showing these.
Cheers
Emilio

Striking shot Dave - love the ground-level-up angle. These organisms can live hundreds (and possibly thousands) of years - so I imagine the specimen you photographed has seen quite a lot of seasons come and go.

--
AH

dave gaines said:

What a fine palet of colors. I like the blues and greens accented by the bits of red.

Is that ice on the river and ice and snow on the flat roofs in the foreground? If it's ice they have a roof drainage/slope problem. Just my architectural engineering speaking here of course.

Click to expand...

Yep - that is indeed ice on the river and you can still see some snow piled here and there on the rooftops. It was very cold. Some of the buildings in the city dated from about 1250 onwards - so without the benefit of a sloping roof, there must have bene some other solution to the annual snow-melt problem. I should have wondered about that at the time and asked someone!

dave gaines said:

Piggly Wiggly was the City planner way back when. He followed the town dog, wobbly willy in laying out the streets and lot lines. Not at all like boring Burbank, Ca. I like it.

Click to expand...

LOL!! Many ancient cities did indeed have plans - but I guess in other cases, it was simply a matter of build a house wherever you buy land.

--
AH

A good angle and interesting shapes, Dave - they make me wonder what made those branches change their growth direction from time to time.

And they look like a perfect weapon for beating off bike muggers!

I though I would make a change this week and not give a customary reply to posts, and I see many of you have taken the opportunity to converse with each other, I think this is a good thing and it makes a healthy thread.

my thanks to odl, dingobear, emsig, Messier Object and BabuRick for the kind comments on my photo 'bushland'

and my thanks to all for their contributions this week, many of them really are quite special!

--
Riley

any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended
support 1022 Sunday Scapes'

Thanks AH,

I skewed the perspective by rotating the camera off-level. The plant is among hundreds of desert plants in one corner of the gardens. It may have been planted as a mature tree 100 years ago.

Henry Huntington (1850-1927) built his estate in San Marino, CA near the San Gabriel Mission (built in 1771) around 1900. He built it to romance his sweetheart, Arabella (1850-1924), who was also his Uncle's widow. Huntington Gardens was donated to a non-profit foundation by Henry Huntington at the time of his death in 1927.

In 1900 Henry Huntington inherited his Uncle Collis's railroad empire, the Central Pacific Railroad which was part of the Trans Continental Railroad completed in 1869. Henry built RRs for a dozen years, aquiring competitors and growing the western US lines serving California. He built Pacifi Electric Railway, a series of trolley lines across Los Angeles County and into the beach cities. Everyone who commutes in LA wishes his street cars were still running, not dismantled in the wake of automobiles and freeways in the 1930's.

Henry's inner calling was collecting rare books and art so in 1916 he retired from the RR and began building a library and exhibition space at his estate. Henry Huntington had one of the largest collections of wealth in California at the time. Today there is more American art on display than you can see in a day and the 200 acres or so of landscaped grounds are maintained for public enjoyment. Memebrship, entry fees and donations provide funding to maintain the grounds and growing art collections today.
http://www.huntington.org
--
Dave
No thought exists without an image. Socrates
http://whaleshark.smugmug.com

BabuRick said:

A good angle and interesting shapes, Dave - they make me wonder what made those branches change their growth direction from time to time.

And they look like a perfect weapon for beating off bike muggers!

Click to expand...

Thanks Rick,

I like your bike story. It inspired me to wirte my little parody of the mugger. Any of the cactus near my yucca tree, like the cholla would make a better weapon for fending off thieves and muggers, if you could get a hold of one without jabbing 100 needles in your hand. Ouch, those cholla are serious cactus.

The yucca is smooth and soft by comparison. The big green leaves have no spines. The main trunks of these trees arch to the south towards the sun. The branches appear to turn west, maybe to reach out from under the shade of a taller tree that was here many years ago. Today these yucca trees are the tallest thing for a hundred feet or more, so it's anyone's guess. The newer branches seem to be shooting straight up.

A cholla cactus from Joshua Tree National Park in November, 2011.



--
Dave
No thought exists without an image. Socrates
http://whaleshark.smugmug.com