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Is that a hint, dicot?

Hi SOCAL guys!

Are you hinting that you don't care to see anything about your NORCAL neighbor's public garden adventures?

Great pics bearstate. That is definately a Jacaranda tree.

By the way, i wouldn't consider SJO as Norcal, it's more Central than north. Eureka, Santa Rosa, Petaluma...Those are Norcal. I get kind of annoyed when people from Socal refer to everything north of the Grapevine as Norcal, and they associate Norcal with pines and snow. lol.

Wow.

Aren't people touchy?

The Bay Area, including the South Bay has always been considered Northern California as far as I know.

Bakersfield, which is North of the Grape Vine, is SOCAL.

There are other regions which people will claim first, to be fair, The Central Coast, The Central or San Joaquin Valley, The Sacramento Valley, Owens Valley and North Coast. And here abouts you have the Bay Area and in particular, the South Bay, Santa Clara Valley or Silicon Valley. As for myself, I'm an open door and will cross any line. I've travelled all over California like Huell Houser and enjoy the whole pie. I'm just happiest here, home in the South Bay.

:)

I have comments about Bakersfield that probably should not be listed here.

Did you go into the tomb. I was amazed when I visited Egypt how accurate this museum is. And if you want a crowded threat the museum in Cairo is overcrowded with mummies etc.

Penny

SJose is definitely Northern CA. That's why we have such hideous commute problems - 680, 101, and 280 are major commute routes in and out of Silicon Valley. Oracle, EBay, Yahoo, Google, et.al. would be amazed to think someone considered them as located in the Central Valley region. They view themselves as San Francisco Bay Area companies. That's why so many company shuttles run from the BART station down to Silicon Valley.

I hate blogs, so loved your gorgeous pix of one of my favorite places. I remember taking my nephew and niece when they were younger, to go on the great "tomb tour" of the Rosicrucian Museum. It is very near the SJose Rose Garden which is a stunning place to visit, especially in summer (altho very crowded, with lots of wedding photo shoots taking place!).

Also nearby is the Winchester Mystery House, built by Sarah Winchester of the rifle family fortune. Another great place to take the kids and adults!

SJose used to be pretty bare of good food pickings, but many excellent restaurants have opened in the last ten years. Amongst them is Arcadia, Michael Mina's restaurant - he's one of my favorite chefs, who was the original creative genius that put Aqua restaurant in San Francisco on the foodie's map. SJose also has the largest Vietnamese community in the Bay Area, with the best Vietnamese food around.

If i could i would post a photo of a telephone,hourglass and some poor shlub sitting by the P.C.....
My other thought is ..the hardscape outdoes the landscape,whew,to have some of that in the backyard huh?
I really havent been able to see all the pics(thumbs next time?) but i can see that the true date palm looks much better in San Jose than it does northwards in the bay area.

Actually Bearstate, while I enjoy your pictures and posts, some of them would be more appropriate for the "conversations" part of the California forum, rather than the main forum, which is supposed to be strictly for information about gardening. The conversation post area is meant for off topic subjects that the poster feels would be of interest to the rest of the readers of these posts

I loved the photos! I see no reasons for this to be anywhere else. Many of us don't bother looking at blogs or the conversations forums. Bearstate, keep on doing what you are doing. I love to see all the wonderful photos and hear about where they are going. People don't have to look if they don't want to. All it takes is a click of the mouse to move on to something else

Hmmm.

I've been using the internet since a time before HTML and the Web. It was always hoped that it would be a free medium for exchange and many would argue to keep it that way, even to keep from taxing purchases made over the net. Of course, there have always been moderators for newsgroups and forums. But if you've been at it as long as I have, you know what a flame is and a boink.

Several times yes, I've seen the topic of threads in this forum wander away from the garden after starting there, most recently the thread that was evoked by our Gov. wanting to close State Parks. These can be charged issues and well, some of our State Parks are Gardens.

I believe that a forum ( any forum ) should not be so dry as to be a question, followed by an answer. No, on the contrary, these forums are an exchange. And what passes between us is not simply questions and answers returned. We share gardening in terms of information, help, suggestions, examples and exposure to aspects of the garden that go beyond simply asking for help with the garden. Photos have their place. Art has its place.

The forum should in fact be like a magazine to which we all contribute as we see fit and our editor is the moderator of this website. If we wanted dry information, there's a thing called a list service. This forum deserves to be more dynamic.

Now I have to admit that there are still problems out there in the real world when it comes to handling certain types of data like jpegs and other graphic content. It seems inconceivable to me that some folks are still using dial-up modems, but I suspect some are and it can be horrible loading up graphic content for those folks, even to get a basic web page. And its sad too because many WIFI adapters can link directly without even a service fee to nets that don't ask for WEP/WPA passphrases or net hex codes. So some folks pay $30+ per month to an ISP and others, just pay $55.00 for a one time Adapter, some of which are just USB plug-ins and get high speed internet for free. And I do mean High-Speed. No Cables. No Dial-Ups. No Kidding. There was just a story in the Mercury News about a grand plan to WIFI everything that is being revived. Fiberoptics is fast, but the true ether is thin air.

So Stanofh. Get rid of that damn telephone Dial-Up line, the hour glass and stop being a Schlub.

CAAvonlady is correct about people not going further than the front line for interaction on any forum web site. It's a truth. This forum is under Regions and Climates and I think the examples provided in Public Gardens do have a very legitimate place here as those examples show clearly what will grow in the area and how the professionals who maintain public gardens exercise their techniques and art. Seeing is believing. I would love to see a photo tour from some other part of either this area or any other.

BTW: stanofh, yes, those are Phoenix Dactylifera, although there is one silver leaved palm in the Garden that looks like a Bismarck.

Jkom51,

I drove by the Municipal Rose Garden on the way to the Rosicrucian Museum and it has a very nice enclosure, but all the roses were pruned back and there was really nothing to see at this time. It seemed rather squarish to me too. I think it would be neat if they put in a Gazebo, some winding paths and some undulations, like small hills, a bird feeder or even a bird house, etc.

Our only option where we live is dial-up, unless we want to spend hundreds by utilizing our "clear view of the southern sky." Fortunately, we only spend $10/mo. for this very reliable, albeit slow, service. Just wanted to point out that, yes, some of us are "inconceivably" stuck with dial-up, but I also know its limitations. Too bad, since I would have liked to see more of your pics. (I have to stop the page loading and view them one at a time, so I don't get to see very many before time has gotten away from me.)

On the other hand, it's inconceivable to me just how many people there are who have been using computers for so long and yet, don't know about image compression or how to post images as thumbnails. :D

That's my off-topic post for the day!

Brenda

Bearstate, another great posting of this jewel in California! If I ever get there, I will certainly try to visit those gardens.

The Yucca Elephantipes also grows a bit too well here in southern CA. Just yesterday, I was finally able to down the one growing in my backyard! I've been cutting away at it since 2000, and every time I sawed off a piece, it would sprout again!

Totally enjoy your postings so please continue. I am also one of those persons that hardly ever go to the Conversation post, and always wondered why it was even introduced.

The number of photos is fine. Everybody likes to see pics. Just that all in one post for the 50% dileups just makes it almost impossible to see all. That's my compalint -cant see your whole fine post. It would only take you a few minutes to repost in thumbs...

You got me there. As long as I have been using the internet, it is relatively new for me to post pics to the web. I've thought to modify the resolution of my pics down before posting them, but posting thumbs seems to be an even better solution as it would not require me to spend a whole lot of time resizing my pics.

Forgive me for being ignorant. I use photobucket.com. How can I post thumbs from photo bucket? If you tell me, I promise I will repost in thumbs ( perhaps not directly in this forum ) so that those who are having trouble can view the pics.

Photobucket has a thumbs for message board option. I haven't tried it for garden web,so i hope it posts photos rather than URLS. On other sites it work fine-the only way i can see my larger photo(number of) posts.
At least here you can preview.

Well, hell. I'm not sure what the heck I'm doing.

I was able to create a clickable image link like the following. But that isn't a thumbnail.

Try clicking on the following. You'll note you can magnify and demagnify the image too.

{{gwi:515299}}

What do you think of that?

Bingo!

Click on the thumbnail and you can maximize and minimize it to suit your preferences.

{{gwi:515384}}

Give me some time and I'll make it so all you Dial-Up Folks can see the PICS.

no,no,no.You click on ALL the photos you want to post as thumbs first..they get a red border..then press html maker at the bottom..then press thumbs for message boards option..voila!

Actually Stanofh, there are several ways to play this out. To exercise more control, you build an html table and add each thumbnail as you go.

I have now redone one of my photo tours in Thumbnails. You can find it in the 'Nature Photography and Optics' forum. To get there, you go to the top menu bar of the GardenWeb web page, pull down the Forums dropdown menu to 'Nature Forums' and there you'll find the 'Nature Photography and Optics' forum. In it, you'll find a repost of the thread 'A Place for a New Garden' done with thumbnails.

I'll redo the Japanese Garden and Walk Like an Egyptian threads next.

The Rosicrucian Museum had a contest last year to landscape a large portion of the garden to a California native, region appropriate landscape. The winning design was published in the Mercury News and will be installed by Dec 2008. Looking forward to it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Native Landscape Contest

OK, all four photo tours have been reposted using thumbnails and henceforth, I will only use thumbnails to post multiple photos in threads.

You can find them all in the 'Nature Photography and Optics' forum. To get there, you go to the top menu bar of the GardenWeb web page, pull down the Forums dropdown menu to 'Nature Forums' and there you'll find the 'Nature Photography and Optics' forum. In it, you'll find a repost of all the threads ...

A Place for a New Garden
I Think I'm Going Japanese #1
I Think I'm Going Japanese #2
Walk Like an Egyptian

You can also go right to the thumbnail version of the original post for this thread by clicking the link below

Here is a link that might be useful: Repost of Walk Like an Egyption ( Using Thumbnails )

Thank you SO much, Bearstate! I can't believe how fast your new post loaded! And I can see all of the pics, and click on any in which I'd like to see more detail.

(All of the thumbnails loaded in the time it took me to type this....and I type fairly quickly. :D)

Btw, the Yucca photos in the Egyptian post are so very fascinating and beautiful!

Brenda

Yourit,

You've just confirmed for us all that thumbnails do load faster. Thanks. I was kinda wondering whether it made any difference perhaps, because I figured there might be some conversion process involved. I'm happy to see that they do in fact work fast as claimed.

And in fact, I like them as they allow me to lay out my articles better, using HTML tables to format the thumbnails into groupings.

Arvind,

I did note a sign on the grounds at the Rosicrucian that they had a Native Plants project underway. It was posted in a small grassy yard next to what I'm guessing was employee parking. Your link to the contest article helps much to clarify what that sign eluded to. I can't wait to see what they do with that project and I hope they don't cut down any of those Yuccas or those beautiful towering pines that are just to the of the main museum front entrance, between the museum and the planetarium. Those are very beautiful trees and I regret, too large for me to have photographed. You have to go there to appreciate them.

Cool pics bearstate... I've noticed you have been posting tons of pics on this forum and thats great. The best thing to do is just as you did, add the word (PICS) to your subject line... the thumbnails would be awesome also for those who have slower connections.

I thought the bandwidth would be an issue due to the large loads, but I guess since it's hosted outside of gardenweb, it shouldnt be a problem here.

anyways, thanks for the pics.. its nice to take a peek while at work with coffee in hand.