Welcome to smoky Sacramento, Laura! We cancelled yesterday's work day in the cemetery because of the smoke - and may do it again for Saturday, because the forecast is for more of the same. We almost NEVER cancel, but who needs to breathe this yucky air? Glad you made it out to the cemetery garden - yes, the peak is over, but fortunately there is always something in bloom. We'll be "Deadheading at Dusk" on Monday, July 7th, at 6:30 pm. They lock the gates at 7 pm normally, so this is a great chance to be in the cemetery when nobody else is there. We work till we can't see what we're doing, then have some refreshments and hang out Hopefully, the smoke will have cleared by then, and it won't be too hot. Hope you can join us, and anybody else who is in the area. Anita

Wow Karen, your pictures are amazing! I am so sorry that we didn't get a chance to meet up, but I feel like I was there with this post. It is so neat to see my "home" from the eyes of a visitor. Right now it is 9am and it is still really foggy. I am heading down to San Juan this afternoon for my brothers wedding rehearsal and tomorrow for the wedding. They are getting married at El Adobe which is a restaurant within walking distance of the mission. Hoping to get there a little early so I can hit the antique mall before going in to the rehearsal. Glad you had a nice trip and made it home safely!

lazy, yeah, no problem being seen, since my garage is very prominent and I have a street light right across the street. I would have loved putting the numbers somewhere around my entry porch, but it's too far back and partially obscured by a tree. I live on a quiet circle which has slow traffic and these numbers say "here I am!" So many house numbers are the kind that attach from the back with floating options. I experimented with one of those and found it impossible to gauge level since the pins can throw it off. And good luck if you want to remove it later. I like to place the number where it goes and screw it in, right then and there.

Nancy, Gold is better than plain brown. Honestly, anything is better than plain brown. Around Thursday or so I noticed green leaves falling from some trees---they didn't even turn brown first. I think our trees are confused. Why wouldn't they be? Every week they are exposed to lows in the 30s and highs in the 90s. How they even know what season we are in at this point is beyond me. Currently it is 90 degrees at our Mesonet station and 89 at our house. There's reports of haziness and smoke in the air, but none of us are spotting any plumes of smoke, so I think that, as the rumored cold front moves across the state, it may be pushing smoke, fog, haze, smog, dust or whatever ahead of it. There was a 1,700 acre wildfire in the county west of us yesterday and it looked like smoke was hanging over the river this morning, so maybe it is that. Our gold foliage peaked around Thursday or Friday and is going to a dull golden brown today. I believe the hard freeze we had a few days ago has really impacted the tree foliage. Further south in Texas where the freeze didn't happen or at least was not as prolonged as it was here, they have better foliage color than we do right now. At least 3 or 4 of the red oaks in the yeard near our house have some red, and our big red oak near the road, which is my favorite tree, is beginning to show some red. It probably will peak next week though it is hard to tell in this weather. We turned back the clocks at bedtime last night so at least we'd be in sync with the rest of the area when we woke up today. It didn't matter what time the clock was showing---I woke up at the same time I do every single day, even if the clock showed it was an hour earlier. My body clock gets pretty firmly set on a time and doesn't really care what the clock says. It takes me at least a month to adjust to a time change and then before you know it, we're springing forward or falling back all over again. Jennifer, I'm glad you feel a little better today and hope you didn't cough your way through making the announcement at church. Hot and windy, hot and windy, hot and windy. It feels more like earliest September than early November. Chris sent me a text about a half-hour ago---a shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, near San Antonio, TX. Word is several people were shot, including children, before police arrived and took out the shooter. He said he had heard 15 people were down, but I haven't seen any firm number on any media yet, and often early report are erroneous. It just seems to me like the world has gone mad---it is sad when people are not safe in church. And, in a state like Texas with open carry, it is unfortunate someone in that church wasn't armed because perhaps they could have stopped the shooter. It seems wrong to carry a gun to church, but we cannot kid ourselves---these shootings can happen anywhere any more. I'd like to be working in the garden, but all the swarms are still out there---Asian lady bugs, wasps, bees, yellow jackets....so I'm indoors. Oh, and the fire ants and harvester ants all are out and scurrying around. I guess maybe they are busy storing up provisions for winter. Dawn