Tag Archives: Santa Barbara

Not again!

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A sea lion in distress at the beach.

The other day, we were on our evening beach walk when we first saw the sea lion above. I noticed a woman standing near the sea lion. The sea lion would alternate sitting up and lying down. (I first wrote laying down — but I fixed it. Lie and lay have stumped me for years.)

We sat and watched the sea lion struggle to get back into the ocean. She would bob her head up and down while sitting up. Two summers ago, we saw a number of sea lions on the beach in distress. They did the same thing as this one. I called the hotline for marine animals and told them the location of the sea lion.

Then there were three women standing by the sea lion. I walked to the water’s edge to tell them to keep their distance and not to get any closer to the sea lion. I had learned that people and dogs can stress sick sea lions to death!

When I approached the women, I noticed one was wearing a uniform from the Channel Islands Marine and Wildlife Institute. That’s who I had called. So, they were already aware. I asked the volunteer if the sea lion was suffering from the same issue that we saw a few years ago. She said yes, and that she was stationed to keep people and dogs away and to observe until sunset. She said they weren’t doing any rescues that night.

I wrote about sea lions HERE and HERE two summers ago. The second link has a video of a sea lion which shows you how they move when affected with Domoic Acid poisoning.

Here’s an excerpt:

The volunteer from the Channel Islands Marine Wildlife Institute explained that the sea lion was suffering from Domoic Acid poisoning, which is caused by algae bloom.

My husband said that algae bloom happens every year. Isn’t that a normal thing? Wouldn’t sea lions be used to it?

She said they were inundated with calls about sick sea lions along the coast and that the Domoic Acid poisoning could be fatal. The volunteers were out observing the sea lions from sunrise to sunset along the beaches. Apparently stress could make the illness worse. She was standing on the beach all day to keep people and dogs away from the sick sea lion.

The volunteer yesterday explained that Domoic Acid poisoning occurs when fish eat the plankton, which isn’t toxic to them. Then the sea lions eat the fish and they get sick.

It was sad to see the sea lion suffering. It was still on beach when we left with the volunteer standing near. On the bright side, she said they’ve had very few Domoic calls this year, unlike two years ago.

Do you confuse Lie and Lay? How about effect and affect? Any others?

What do you think about people approaching a sea lion on the beach? I watched it happen two summers ago, people ignoring the yellow crime tape and signs to stay away.

Orchids, Dolphins and a Golden Retriever

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This is five-year-old Banner, who belongs to friends. We were hanging out on their patio waiting for dinner. Banner wanted food, too.

We visited an orchid farm a mile from our VRBO called Gallup & Stribling Orchids.

I found this information about the germination of orchids to be fascinating:

Fusing Horticulture & Technology

Gallup & Stribling Orchids has one of the largest plant tissue culture laboratories in the United States dedicated to orchid propagation. We provide full laboratory services to the hobbyist and commercial grower—domestically and internationally. Our investment in the laboratory has enabled us to maintain a scientifically pure and well-curated collection of beautiful orchids to share worldwide.

Fusing horticulture and technology in the laboratory has paved the way for hobbyist and commercial orchid production—Gallup & Stribling is proud to be at the forefront.

Laboratory services include orchid seed germination, cloning by mertistem-tissue culture of Cymbdium, Cattleya, and Oncidium orchids, replating of all orchid genera, and treatment for ploidy change.

https://www.gallup-stribling.com/laboratory/

Aren’t the orchids gorgeous?

We’ve been seeing lots of dolphins. Sunday morning there were dozens of dolphins. There were two types, which I’m trying to identify. Mostly the difference is the size and how they act. The “big” ones slowly swim through the ocean surfacing from time to time.

The smaller ones swim fast and leap into the air. I’ve looked up dolphins in Santa Barbara and I believe the two we’ve seen are Short-beaked Common Dolphins (the smaller sized). They are less than six feet in length and weigh up to 170 pounds.

Behavior and Diet

Short-beaked common dolphins are often active at the surface. These highly social, energetic dolphins commonly leap out of the water at high speeds, flip end-over-end, and somersault in the air. They will also swim alongside ships riding the bow for long periods of time. This “bow riding” behavior has even been observed alongside large whales.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/short-beaked-common-dolphin

The larger dolphins I believe are the Common Bottlenose Dolphins:

Common Bottlenose Dolphin

Common bottlenose dolphins are found throughout the world in both offshore and coastal waters, including harbors, bays, gulfs, and estuaries of temperate and tropical waters. They are one of the most well-studied marine mammals in the wild. In addition, they are easy to view in the wild because they live close to shore and are distributed throughout coastal and estuarine waters. 

Meet Our Cetaceans

I tried to video dolphins the other day and I accidentally clicked on Slo-Mo. You can try to watch the video, but if it’s too slow, I understand…Although it does speed up at the end.

https://videopress.com/v/VRgVqEU7?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true
Slo-Mo video of dolphins

What are your thoughts about orchids? Do you have any? Are you able to get them to bloom?

Did you know orchids can be produced in labs?

What are your thoughts about dolphins?

Fresh, fresh and more fresh

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Our first trip to the Santa Barbara Farmer’s Market was a huge success. In fact it made my day!

Saturdays mean a trip to Santa Barbara for fresh fruits and veggies. Thursday evenings we head to Carpinteria to visit many of the same vendors. What an abundance to have farm fresh produce twice a week! I can stock up and never run out.

I wrote about Santa Barbara’s Farmer’s Market two years ago HERE. I think the photos are better in the previous post, so you may want to take a look. I was too burdened down with produce to take great photos Saturday.

Photos from the market:

Our favorite vendor we call Farmer Fred. He’s friends with two couples we know in Santa Barbara. We went to a BBQ with him and his family last summer. He’s got a personality that doesn’t stop. He loves bantering and joking with his customers. As the close of the market approaches, he gives away produce. Two older Latino women came and he gave them two boxes of peppers. We asked what they were doing with them.

“They’re making tamales,” was all Farmer Fred told us.

They may be tamale vendors or making them for church. In any case, Fred helps them out.

While I shopped around the market, my husband hung out with Farmer Fred.

A woman was helping Fred that we’ve met in years’ past. She weighed produce for a customer and handed them their bag of tomatoes. She asked, “How much do we owe you?” We all laughed because at that point Fred was giving away produce.

We’re also on a first-name basis with our favorite stone-fruit farmer, Todd. He has 10 acres in Arizona he wants to sell us.

I bought the white peach, Flavor King and Dapple Dandy (tastes like candy) pluots from Todd. What a treat!

What I made for dinner:

Roasted round zucchini that I sliced and tossed in olive oil. After roasting, I sprinkled it with a Mexican chile seasoning.

I bought bone marrow from a vendor at the Farmer’s Market who was selling beef and pork. Bone marrow was listed under OFFAL. I roasted it in the oven at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, along with the zucchini. Unfortunately, the top bone lost most of it’s marrow while cooking. But what was left was delicious! I served the veggies and bone marrow with chips, salsa and guacamole made from avocados a friend gave us. Yum!

Do you have a farmer’s market near you? What are your favorite things to buy?

Almost beach time

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beach time
It’s almost beach time.

Soon, we’ll be making a nine-hour drive to our beach vacation in California. It will be our seventh year renting the VRBO cottage.

I will admit, I’m a little anxious over the trip. I think it’s because of how things turned out last August. It wasn’t exactly a relaxing vacation with our DIL getting diagnosed with cancer. Our son and DIL planned a last-minute wedding prior to surgery that was cancelled due to COVID. Later, they were able to move ahead with the wedding. At first, they didn’t want people flying in bringing germs, since she was beginning chemo. Then our son really wanted us there, but we couldn’t get flights to make it on time.

It was an extremely stressful time with lots of waiting, questions and prayers. I wrote about it HERE.

The last week of our vacation, friends that we have in the area all got COVID. We left a couple days early, because it seemed like the safe and sane thing to do.

This year I’m reading that Arizona has one of the lowest COVID rates, while California has one of the highest.

The cat sitter is lined up. The next door neighbor is watching our house. Time to pack and hope for a peaceful, relaxing and rejuvenating beach vacation.

Do you find vacations to be relaxing or stressful? Why?

Travel and sickness

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Pretty kitty
Olive hanging out on the guest bed. The bedding was my daughter’s growing up.

Yesterday was my son’s birthday. I was going to repost my son’s birthday story, where he asked to have 50 kids for his second grade birthday party. We had adopted Angus, our yellow lab, from Guide Dogs of the Desert the year before. I wrote about his birthday party in honor of Angus where our son asked for donations to Guide Dogs instead of presents. He raised $1,600. You can read the story HERE.

I remember our family driving to Guide Dogs to meet Angus. I was nervous about the dog and after we had him in the car, I ran back into the office to ask if I could bring him back — if he didn’t work out. The woman looked at me like I was crazy.

Then she said, “Here are his medical records.” I looked at the paperwork and noticed Angus shared the same birthday with my son. I realized that was it. There was no going back.

We loved Angus until after my son went off to college. My daughter was a junior in high school when we had to say good-bye.

When I looked at my posts from last year, I discovered I had COVID this week in 2023. I had traveled to Washington state to spread my mom’s ashes on her birthday and got sick.

Last week, I got sick after my trip to Santa Barbara which I planned for my mom’s birthday. I’m very stuffed up, have a low-grade fever and I’m achy. I can’t stand being sick and this is my second bug since Christmas. Strange that every time I travel, I seem to get sick.

This current bug was because a woman who was on our tour by shuttle bus sneezed and coughed on us. Why she didn’t bow out of activities and stay in the gorgeous hotel was beyond me. I would have.

Actually, I never got sick traveling to Mexico by car. It’s only when I fly somewhere. In Puerto Penasco, our beach get away four hours south, we eat meals outdoors, we stay in a condo and we’re apart from other people. However, I read that last week they found seven bodies outside of town all shot. They were all men, wearing military gear and our government identified them as cartel members. So, no Mexico for me right now.

Do you get sick after traveling? Or is it just me?

What do you think of people who won’t stay home when they’re sick?

Weekend Getaway

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Boat in Santa Barbara
I saw this boat in the parking lot of the Marina in Santa Barbara. It has my name on it!

Friday was my mom’s actual birthday. I posted my memory of spreading her ashes last year — a few days early. Mom was on my mind the past weeks. I was feeling the milestone.

Good thing I thought about how I might be feeling in advance. I had a plan. We scheduled a weekend getaway in one of my favorite places. Santa Barbara. We celebrated Mom’s birthday there. I was with friends, incredible views, a fun hotel, food, food and more food. It was a wonderful way to spend the weekend.

Here are photos from Santa Barbara:

We arrived at the Santa Barbara Airport on a sunny afternoon.

A view from our friends’ backyard.

Views from our hotel’s rooftop pool. It was breathtaking! What a surprise when we walked out on the rooftop. I had no idea it would be spectacular.

Hotel lobby. I loved how the hotel was decorated in a Spanish Colonial Revival mix with Moroccan flair.

Here we are in the mirror, with a courtyard behind us in one of the hotel’s three buildings.

Morning walk on Stearns Wharf.

Looking back at Santa Barbara from the wharf.

Where is your favorite place to go to treat yourself to a special getaway?

I’m reminded of a song by Lenny Kravitz, “Fly Away.”

Good News!

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This is my family with our daughter-in-law’s family during a Christmas week vacation together in Santa Barbara during a prior year. We were only missing one sister, Maggie, who was at grad school at Cambridge.

I’m sharing wonderful news. My son and daughter-in-law called on their way home from the oncologist. Buff had her first scan since her six-months of chemo ended without major problems and side effects.

Buff has a clean bill of health and feels terrific!

She will receive scans every three months for the next two years, then every six months for the following three years.

It’s been a worrisome, stressful time since Buff’s initial diagnosis of Stage 3C colon cancer, surgery and chemo. I feel relief like our entire family has turned the corner — because our daughter-in-law Buff is doing so well. Hopefully, the newlyweds will have clear sailing from now on throughout their future. I wrote about the day of her surgery HERE.

I’d like to hear more good news! What good news do you have to share?

Ave Maria was played Christmas night by two of Buff’s sisters, Allie and Christy, during the vacation in the photo above. They’re both professional musicians. I’m so grateful to have enjoyed their private concerts and I hope there are many more to come!