Friday, January 3

The last day of Ken's "vacation" before starting work, Friday was the day to get the car registered in California. The state's DMV, the city's only office, is located in an urban residential neighborhood near the panhandle of Golden Gate Park. We drove, found the parking lot filled and instead parked on a perilously steep side street. We did what everyone was doing - went to the end of the line.

After an hour in sunshine we neared the front door!

It was 9:00AM. At 4:00PM we emerged with our license plates in hand. The tediousness and seeming inefficiency had nothing to do with the overburdened staff and everything to do with the fact that California, and so many other states, passed a proposition to limit taxes: the DMV is woefully underfunded for the job they're expected to perform. The facility is clearly outdated and inadequate for the numbers of people to be served. I looked at our fellow DMV patrons - a depressingly motley assortment of misfits, oddballs and sociopaths - and thought, "This is the anti-tax Tea Party's grass roots." The DMV employees were doing their best to serve what appeared to be the clientele of a methadone clinic. Okay, there were some perfectly fine souls in one with us as well: folks from New Hampshire registering their vehicle, a worker from Mexico applying for a license, an elderly schoolteacher renewing her permit. But - and here's why I salute the state employees - we discovered (actually the DMV staff discovered) that we had been erroneously overcharged $2000 when we purchased our Ford from the Stamford dealer. This was discovered when the calculations of Connecticut sales and California excise taxes were being determined. We also learned that the Stamford dealer had transposed our birth dates on the Connecticut records. At any rate, despite voter opposition to supporting government services, we left the DMV very happy. We had our plates and we had the information to claim our $2000 from the car dealer. But the entire day of line-standing made me decide not to rush into registering the dogs...

Our plates are standard issue:

Thursday, January 2

Lucca, wonder dog and world traveler, had cataract surgery at Cornell University in November. All went well and he breezed through three post-operation check-ups. But just to be sure, he had a penultimate check-up at the UC Davis veterinary hospital, the world's largest canine ophthalmological center. Davis is located just west of Sacramento. Ken and I drove with both dogs, and while I remained with Lucca during his appointment, Ken and Marco explored UC Davis' botanical garden, nurseries and greenhouses. We want to go back - they have a plant sale coming up and were in the midst of preparing drought-resistant plant materials for public sale. Many of the plant materials appealed very much to us, partly by virtue of their textures, and partly because of the many shades of green a broad selection of would present. [Click any of the photos below to enlarge.]

It made us want to garden in California

So many textures, colors and shapes

A gorgeous plant - such a fresh green

We liked this lavender, too

A final favorite - Cape Balsam

Their promise: easy to grow!

Back seat, heading back home - exhausted

Wednesday, January 1

Happy New Year! I won't begin to account for the last week. It was filled with the tedious chores and bureaucratic tasks that accompany any relocation. But today we drove to Berkeley to poke around, and came across the Berkeley rose garden:

We slammed on the brakes!

The underlying structure of the garden in winter.

The amphitheater and stoa or loggia

Raspberry swirl ice cream.

A water feature as the amphitheater's stage

Dense vertical ground cover

Pasadena weeps.

I like pale yellow roses: "Sunny Flare"

Sluices and channels in the amphitheater.

The view from the "stage".

A volunteer's car: worth "clicking" to enlarge - très Berkeley