USA LA! Home Sweet Home : '05 Orchids!

March 26

Nancy Artz, front and center, you go! Nancy is fast becoming our designated good-time-girl. She takes us on cool outings and we say 'wow, what a good time we had. Thanks Nancy!'

Nancy and Sandy in the back row. Here we are enjoying a wonderful lunch out on the patio of the cafe in the Malibu Country Inn.

Then we drove over to Zuma Canyon Orchids.

Of course you have read The Orchid Thief? If not you are in for a great treat. You'll get to spend some serious quality time with real fanatics and see how orchids have become the center of a devoted and complicated way of life.

Here they don't have so many varieties like you'd expect after reading The Orchid Thief but still numerous gorgeous examples of the more commercial types.

I suppose if they did have the rare ones they wouldn't be out on free display!

A staghorn fern.

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Sandy in total concentration, the first step in what will no doubt become a fabulous art project.

Sandy's shot of stripped leaves...

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...and white orchids.

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More.

After lunch and the orchids we were heading back looking for a nice stop to stretch our legs and came upon a wildflower display put on by the California Native Plant Society at, I think, the visitor's center at Malibu Lagoon State Beach.

It was very fun, a community effort, casual in presentation yet serious in purpose.

There was a nice easy walk outside the visitor's center and we identifed a few places that would make for a perfect picnic spot.

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Views from the walk.

More. Do we live in paradise or what.