Tortoise Encounter

The blog has fallen by the wayside. On Easter Sunday, I got a call from my father. My grandmother (my mom's mother) had passed away. Grandma Betty was in her late 80's, and she had Alzheimer's Disease, so it wasn't a surprise. Still, I was sad, and of course I will miss my grandma. I spent the whole week last week getting ready for my talk on Friday, so that I could go to the funeral in Dinuba, CA. on Thursday. I have missed you, dear blog readers, and I am sorry for my long silence.

I was glad to go to the funeral and be with my family. Somehow, being with the family makes the grief more bearable, and it is nice to talk about memories of the person bereaved.

My talk on Friday went very well. I got to practice in front of my Mom and Dad the night before, in the hotel room. That helped enormously! I had given the talk to Pono the dog many times, but he usually fell asleep, and didn't offer any constructive criticism. So it was much better to have my parents for an audience, and they offered some really good advice. (At least I am now at the age where I value their opinion! It wasn't always that way.) There was a nice crowd of people who showed up for my talk, and even though my stomach was doing somersaults, once I started to talk about the artists, I was feeling better. People seemed to enjoy what I had to say, and I am glad I decided to be one of the speakers for this month-long art lecture series. For those of you in the area, Bruce Miller will be giving a talk next Friday about Lee Miller and Man Ray. The following week is my friend, Marjorie Franklin, talking about "Pixels in the Wind: The digital side of contemporary art".

My husband came home Saturday morning, and so today, Pono and I had company on our walk. It was a nice warm day, and we saw lots of my beloved desert flowers in addition to many lizards, one rattlesnake (which Matthias nearly stepped on!), and....
The tortoise!!!! Hurrah!!!



I have been wanting to see a tortoise since about 3 weeks ago when a friend of mine emailed me a photo of a tortoise she had seen with her sister, who was visiting. Then, another friend told me she and her husband had seen one, on a hike that I have been on many times. I was beginning to think I wasn't going to see one. I was so elated today when I saw this little beauty in the ditch next to the dirt road we were hiking on. I would have taken more photos, but I didn't want to frighten it back into its shell.

I will leave you with a photo of the Chia, which, as I remember from last year, is a member of the mint family. A lovely pom-pom of a flower.