Today we had some business in San Diego, so we headed “across the mountains” (as they say here in “the valley”). It was 95 when we left at 9am, and 65 when we arrived in the city. What a gorgeous day to do some sightseeing! At the recommendation of many friends, we headed over to Balboa Park. It was a lot of fun to just wander the expansive area, looking at the plants and architecture, and talking to some of the street vendors.
There’s a large botanical area, and we were surprised at how many cacti are sprouting flowers. I guess this is the time of year for it. In almost every case, the pretty flowers were attached to very sharp and nasty-looking plants…
Pepper wanted to find out how sharp one of them was…
… and ended up with a tiny splinter from one of the spines. She could hardly see it, and didn’t have a way to dig it out of her finger, so she broke off a big spine from another cactus and used it as a needle to pry out the splinter. Clever girl.
Perhaps the most fun was at the annual Cactus and Succulent Show, which just happened to be today. There was a huge area where vendors were selling– you guessed it– cacti and succulent plants. Table after table was lined with hundreds of varieties of desert plants.
It was really amazing, and we ended up dropping sixty bucks on a bunch of little cacti for our apartment. Something to remember the desert by, even as we were basking in the (relatively) cool blue skies of San Diego.