Mary and I went down to Newport for the weekend to celebrate my birthday, although the festivities consisted largely of me hunkering down in the hotel room with my laptop and a script marked up by a producer with OCD. (Which is why blogging continues to be half-hearted and half-assed. On the bright side, a Writers strike appears likely, so I should soon be at least as unemployed as Jeff Goldstein, Confederate Yankee, and your other leading Citizen Journalists.)
Anyway, we did manage to steal some time for a stroll around Balboa Island, and it seems that no bayside cottage is complete without an ostentatiously contented cat (sometimes two) draped over the deck furniture, their fur gently ruffled by the ocean breezes. And it occured to me that if there’s such a thing as reincarnation, I hope I’m accruing sufficient good karma that I can ultimately cash it in for a return trip as a beach cat.
And here’s a gloriously contorted bottlebrush shrub that was planted a century ago, and is undoubtedly the oldest living thing on the Island.
I include this merely to underscore that while California may be poor in history, we are rich in historic bush.
