A Day Out

so we took a drive over to Glen Ellen and toured the

which we didn't really know was there all of this time living so close by. It is a unique and beautiful Asian woodland in the Valley of the Moon, on the rolling hills above Glen Ellen, California. Founded in 1987, Quarryhill is one of the pre-eminent Asian botanical gardens globally, featuring one of the largest collections of documented, wild-collected Asian plants in the world. It is a quite large expanse honeycombed with trails. Everything is identified in their latin names so I will not even try to repeat any of it here. You are first greeted with this sign                     

                                     but try as I did, none were found.                                     

                                    

A nice swallowtail that kindly posed for a picture.

Afterwards we drove on in to Sonoma and found a Portuguese restaurant that looked inviting. We were not disappointed.                

The menu...........................

refreshments..... a Portuguese beer and sangria made with pomegranate juice

with a little appetizer (on the house) a type of salami, some mystery item and topped with a green olive

and then the food - a pulled pork sandwich and crab filled pita

It was a nice setting at the end of a courtyard of shops

selling items like skinny jeans that someone had held up to a grinder and table saw then priced at $315. But today they were marked down to $100. What a bargan. I would have taken a photo of them but though I might be charged for that.

We browsed through some galleries

and then sat down to people watch while the time ran out on the parking spot. It was at this time I made the discovery of the...well I'll just say last few years for that is how long I have owned my little point & click camera. In messing around I zoomed in on the architecture across the street and took a picture. The little camera shoots images to the equivalent of 37mm normally and fully zoomed in 4X to a 124mm.

I accidentally pushed the lever to zoom once again and noticed the image in the LCD screen get bigger. I didn't know it could do this. Will it take a picture like this too I wondered.

It did! I sat there thinking back to all the pictures I could of had over the years had I known this little camera could do this, not to mention how stupid I am. "Read the manual." The above image is as if I had a 585mm telephoto lense on a 35mm camera. Not bad for hand held.

When dinner time came around we could not think about eating. The lunch was still with us. But dessert, now that is another matter. We went to the Union Hotel.

I forget what they called this. It had a hard chocolate bottom, an almond ice cream center, topped with whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate syrup. I am surprised this wasn't against the law, it was so good.

My wife opted for something less sinful. Ice cream drizzled with chocolate syrup on top of a large chocolate chip cookie. We were full. On the way home we discussed if it were possible to not ever eat dinners anymore and just have a dessert instead. Could one lose weight that way?