A Day of Dragons

Hello friends! Another week, another blog. This one has had some small trips and we went back to San Diego for a short visit.

After our big camping trip the week before we weren't feeling very adventurous and the tire pressure on the car needed looking at, so we did a lot of walking to get to work. That week at the gardens I was working in the orchard and volunteers are allowed to go through and pick whatever fruit they'd like to take home. I took a backpack full of oranges and citruses of all sizes and some other fruit growing there like a pomegranate. What I thought was a big grapefruit turned out to be a huge lemon though! I was ready to eat it with my breakfast later in the week and had to turn it into lemonade instead. It tasted very good with some strawberries and some mint I weeded out of the herb garden on my other day in the gardens. 

Tiny oranges!

Haul from the day

On the Wednesday that week we went to a new restaurant in the little town centre by our apartment. It was more like a deli inside, but had some tables outside and we enjoyed a mediterranean grill with hummus and vine leaves for dinner in the fading sunlight. 

I don't know why he makes this face every time I try and get a picture

We spent friday night baking cookies and then on Saturday we called some family in the morning and then went to sort out the tires on the car and then back to the food lab yet again! Mitchell tried the pizza place (which looked very tasty) and I had the sushi burrito again. Our original plan was to take the food to the drive in theatre, but we changed our minds and went to the regular cinema instead as that was showing a film we wanted to see more. 

On the Sunday we went to San Diego again, but this time went straight to the Natural History Museum. It was pretty big and we spent about three hours walking around, looking at the exhibits. They had a really nice collection of fossils and focused on what would have been found in San Diego and Southern California millions of years ago. 

The entrance in Balboa Park
Mitchell meets a dinosaur

In the live critters section they had a rattlesnake which took a disliking to me so we actually got to hear a rattlesnake rattle! They also had a little section of extant skulls which I enjoyed; horned lizards look exactly like tiny dragons, even on the inside! 

Tiny dragons!

The most unusual part of the museum was the citizen science gallery. It contained the collections of people from the last 200 years who were not scientists by trade. There were some incredible books, including a very large one which held life size drawings of birds of the world and a series of books containing samples of American wood. 

Tucked up in a corner were a couple of very old books printed in the 1600s, but one written by Pliny where he described the natural history of two exotic creatures fighting to the death; an elephant and a dragon. It was so interesting to read and see dragons and serpents described as real creatures to be found in far-off lands.

Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder AD 77

That's all this week, it's meant to be really hot this weekend - up to 40c! So we'll probably br running for the hills or to the beach to escape for a little while. 🌅

Lots of love

Emily and Mitchell

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