freshly picked green olives

The mission olive, Olea europaea, in our front yard is covered in olives so we are going to take a pass at curing them for gifts and a few just for us.
We easily collected enough olives to fill a 3 gallon bucket just from picking the olives off the lower branches that we could reach without a ladder.
We have read many different curing methods and recipes, and we are going to attempt our own version from what we have learned. We started off by checking each olive for bug bits, throwing away the bad ones and cutting a small slice in all the good ones to help leach out the bitters from the olives.
We are now on day 4 of soaking the olives in water, and I'll write more later to let you know how it's going.

Koelreuteria flowers

I love the look of freshly fallen petals floating in water. Here are the soft yellow flowers of the Koelreuteria paniculata tree floating in a fountain below.

Rosa 'Sea Foam'

The Sea Foam rose is a beautiful, light mauve colored, cascading rose that is perfect for pots and hanging over the tops of walls.

planted marble fountain - 2

Here is another view of the marble fountain at Hearst Castle with lilies and aquatic grass. You can just barely see the aquatic grass in this photo.