Callistemon citrinus: I have jokingly called these bottle cleaner plants ever since I arrived here in the US (there is one here at my apartment complex that I drive past every day), and indeed the common name for this Australian native is the crimson bottlebrush. This particular shot was taken at the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park last weekend.
The BBC has an article up today about the world’s best restaurants. The top ten list is as follows:
So what? Well, look at the country that has the most restaurants in this list… the United Kingdom (taking first place, and with a total of four restaurants in the top ten). The country continually criticised for having poor food. And look at France – just a single restaurant on the list. How times change, eh?
The first in a series of photos taken at the Botanical Gardens in San Francisco over the weekend. The bee had been hopping from flower to flower – I just managed to catch him leaving this one.
You can sneak preview the rest of this week’s photos in my Flowers & Plants gallery.
I’ve been meaning to walk down the street to take a photo of this sign for several weeks. I can’t find any information about The Hide Out. I did find another web page with a photo of the sign though, Roadside Peek: Northern California Taverns 4. There is an implication on that page that this is still a working tavern, but I saw nothing to suggest that last night.
It’s a Tonka Truck, but a very small one.
Another photo from the recent trip to Safari West in Santa Rosa. The parrots were on a dead tree right next to where we waited for the jeeps. Obviously used to people, they were happy to have their photos taken, and sometimes even seemed to pose for them.
The little guy on the right is a bicolour dart frog (Phyllobates bicolour), native to Western Columbia. This particular frog is a long way from home though. He lives in the Rainforest Pyramid at Moody Gardens, in Galveston, Texas.
This was on the side of a restaurant called Manana on Isla Mujeres, in Mexico.
One of many signs that I captured while walking around Isla Mujeres, in Mexico.
I’ve uploaded some more photos from Mexico, this time from the Tulum ruins, to the Mexico photo gallery. The Iguana on the right was one of many that were present all over the site. Tulum, Xel Ha and Isla Mujeres were the places we saw them, but the ones at Tulum seemed to be the least bothered by human presence, allowing some great close-up shots even without a long lens.