We have some bird feeders in one part of our back yard. The little sparrows and finches primarily feed from them, but drop enough of the seed on the ground for these turtle doves to clean up.

The natural camouflage of these birds sometimes makes it a little hard to see them against the birdseed and the brown Torrance adobe.

The California Golden Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is our state flower, possibly the most beautiful of all state flowers. We’re currently enjoying this pair and dozens of others in the back yard garden. These just ‘decided’ to grow here - and we’re glad they did. Click the picture to see the very large image.

From Davis Wiki:

On December 12, 1890, the California State Floral Society voted to select a state flower - the nominees were the California poppy, the Matilija poppy and the mariposa lily. The California poppy won by a landslide. Sometimes known as the flame flower, la amapola, and copa de oro (cup of gold), the poppy grows wild throughout California.

The bad news this week was that our florist concessionaire had no Stargazer Lilies.

The good news is that they had these . . .

Click for bigger.

UPDATE: The bloom is here - I posted it on the other blog which gets more views - I wanted to share it with as many people as possible.

This epiphyllum will likely be opened in a day or two - stand by for a bright red orchid cactus flower.

We went to the South Coast Botanic Garden today. We love to go there and see all the spring colors. Today, the rose garden was fully in bloom and ablaze with colors. Here’s a panorama of about half of the rose garden. Click on the pan below to see full-sized in the image viewer.

We love visiting the garden at any time of the year- there’s always something beautiful blooming - but spring is very special.

Without any provocation, vandals threw two chunks of concrete through our front window at about 2 AM this morning. The police were notified and took our report after looking around the area.

We are taking steps to get the damage cleaned up and repaired as soon as possible. I have made a call to our homeowners insurance broker and left a message.

This makes no sense to us that someone would deliberately destroy property in the middle of the night. We, of course, slept poorly after the incident. After this, we are even more glad that we have the means for self-defense should anyone enter the premises without an invitation.

My beautiful Para Warthog is back from the factory! She’s been gone for a couple of months, but we just got her back today. Our gunsmith had to send her back for repairs after the recoil spring assembly broke.

It turns out that the recoil spring assembly was manufactured incorrectly; the larger of the two springs was installed BACKWARDS! I’m surprised that I was able to get over a thousand rounds through her before it gave up.

Anyhow, I’m going to be able to make some more boom this weekend. This is a still frame from a video Bob took at the range a while back.