Thanksgiving was a massive feast for us this year, and there were no leftovers at the end of the day. 🙂 Part of the festivities for the day was a card game called Progressive Rummy. Ever hear of that? AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS! We started the game just before 3pm, and didn’t finish until after 11pm. Seriously. Ugh. You start with 7 cards, and have to get two sets of three. Next hand is 8 cards, with a set of three and a run of four. And on and on until the 21st hand when you have fifteen cards and need blah blah blah. Long game. Like I said, avoid it.
The journey to Fresno to be with Tony’s family was great, as was the visit itself. I’ve often viewed the Central Valley as this flat desert wasteland and thought it was just the ugliest landscape around. Somehow, this time I suddenly tapped into the amazing beauty of it all! The foothill transition from Coast Range to valley is stunning, and across the valley the peaks of the Sierras were peeking through a thick layer of fog as if someone had rolled a loosely-woven blanket of cotton batting over the sharp tips. Then there’s all this suburban stuff in between. The areas that hadn’t been built up yet (or plowed under) had all these little tribble shrubs – the same ones that dry out and break off to become tumbleweeds. They varied from greens to golds to reds to browns to black, and made for an amazing landscape.
We were kinda on a mission, so didn’t stop at the hundreds of places where I would have liked to take pix. I did, however, get a few prime shots from the moving car, and also took a walk around the ‘hood in Fresno to scope out the myriad varieties of landscaping people have there. Fascinating what people have for front yards. Here we go!
You know the drill. Click for bigger pix:
boZannical Gardens 
Маленький Рай.