It has been almost a year since our winter ‘08 vacation. We still look through the vacation photos from time to time. Usually, we find one that we want to share here.

This red tail hawk flew across the road right in front of the camper as we were driving toward the Grand Canyon. It took me by surprise, but I had the camera up already and managed to snap this shot as the hawk climbed to gain altitude.

If you click on the thumbnail above you can see the greater context of the shot. Yes that is snow on the ground. I don’t know what hawks hunt in the snow, but they obviously thrive in that environment.

Back by popular demand, we enjoyed this for today’s main meal. It’s Chinese-style beef and broccoli. On the side, sticky rice - what else?

It starts out when Bob cuts and trims a medium top-sirloin into a julienne. Then, the beef marinates overnight in soy sauce, cooking sherry and corn starch. In the wok, I steamed the florets of broccoli until al dente and then removed the broccoli to drain. Add a little olive oil to the wok and then place the beef and marinade in the wok. When beef browns up, add in the florets and toss. Serve with rice.

Click the image to enlarge.

A few years ago, we put this bench in the yard and planted morning glories next to it hoping for a shaded sitting place in the garden. Long story short: it was badly overgrown, broke the bench and had to come out today.

Click to enlarge this picture that Verna snapped today.

We drove to Santa Monica for a dental appointment this morning. When we got there, we saw an ice rink a half-block away from the dentist office. Since we were there early, we went over to have a closer look.

The Ice at Santa Monica is part of a “celebrate the holidays” initiative sponsored by Bayside District. We saw mostly kids on the ice, including a few very small children in the “Tot Spot,” a scaled down supervised area for the little ones.

It was certainly strange to see outdoor ice skating on the streets of Santa Monica on a 68° fall day. Click on the image to enlarge.

I have a spot in the corner of the yard where about four or five California Fan Palms - a.k.a. ‘weeds,’ started up behind the umbrella tree growing there. I was afraid that they would grow to the point of uprooting the block walls, so I decided to start removing them. The first part of this is to remove the top of the tree, which I did on this past Monday.

I went out today to fill the bird feeders today and I noticed that the trees I just topped had continued growing at an astounding rate! The core of one of the trees that was flush cut on Monday with the chain saw grew about six inches in four days. Remarkable!

Like I said, weeds.

Click image for a closer look.

This is one of the WEIRDEST things I have ever seen in the Garden Shop at the local home improvement warehouse. It’s called a “Pitcher Plant” and had a thirty-five dollar price tag, which turned us off from buying one of these for Mom.

The plants we saw each had a number of “vessels’ extending below the baskets in which the plants were growing. They vaguely resembled pitchers, but the similarity ended there.

Wikipedia offers more information about it:

Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants whose prey-trapping mechanism features a deep cavity filled with liquid known as a pitfall trap. It has been widely assumed that the various sorts of pitfall trap evolved from rolled leaves, with selection pressure favouring more deeply cupped leaves over evolutionary time. However, some pitcher plant genera (such as Nepenthes) are placed within clades consisting mostly of flypaper traps: this indicates that this view may be too simplistic, and some pitchers may have evolved from flypaper traps by loss of mucilage.

Whatever their evolutionary origins, foraging, flying or crawling insects such as flies are attracted to the cavity formed by the cupped leaf, often by visual lures such as anthocyanin pigments, and nectar bribes. The sides of the pitcher are slippery and may be grooved in such a way so as to ensure that the insects cannot climb out.

Ewwwww!

Click image to enlarge.

The contents of this plate fed both of us on Sunday and enough leftovers for a couple of meals during the week. It’s roasted rib-eye steak (bone in) with Danish-style twice-baked potatoes (see recipe). Click image to enlarge.