Pie

This neighborhood Jeanne lives in is very nice and most residents appear to take very good care of their property. However, I think people store so much “stuff” in their garages, they can’t park in them so their cars are parked in the driveways and on the streets. As DanaRiley and I walk these streets, especially on our longer walks in the crisp mornings, I’ve paid particular attention to landscaping. There are many well manicured lawns with real grass like Jeanne’s. There are the drought tolerant lawns with artificial turf or many different colored rock lawns or bark lawns in many shades of brown. Then there are the  “scorched weed look” lawns. There aren’t a lot of these, but they are nasty. Of course, my favorite is the real grass. As I mentioned in a previous post, there’s very little grass in Vegas and for miles and miles surrounding Las Vegas. A friend of Jeanne’s who lives there, was paid by the city to replace her small patch of real grass in her front yard with something drought tolerant. Crazy

We picked up my car this afternoon and they told me that 3 of the 4 tires were out of alignment. This place, Ramona Tires, aligned my tires and didn’t charge me; I was only charged for the oil change yesterday.  My shimmying and shaking should be fixed! They are all very nice there and they know Jeanne and have treated her extremely well for years. 

We traveled to Julian today in the northern mountains of San Diego County.  It’s about an hour and a half drive one way up the hills through the desert to this small mountain town. In the 1870’s, an explorer brought young apple trees to the area and they flourished in the clean, crisp fresh air. Apples are still the biggest product in Julian with several apple pie stores in this 3-4 block town. I’ve been to Julian 4 or 5 times and my favorite place to get pies is The Julian Pie Company. We got a pie for us and a couple for Jeanne’s neighbors. Mmmm good!, especially a la mode! We drove by Pala Casino Spa Resort, where I worked for 7 years, before heading home. It’s an absolute beautiful property.

Alene was again in awe of the trees and flowers along the drive….and the “dying” trees with black bark are still very disturbing to her. We had the usual repeated questions as the day progressed, but all in all the day went pretty well for all of us. Jeanne’s neighbor, Perla, stopped by this afternoon to pick up her pies and visit for awhile, and during her visit, I don’t think Alene spoke 10 words. She was very engaged though during the car ride and was actually quite witty at times! We had a good time and our pie for dessert, caramel apple Dutch, was delicious!