Power to the Purple!


(click it for the bigger picture)

Thursday’s LA Times brought to my attention the 8th-Annual Ojai Valley Lavender Festival, and it didn’t take much convincing to get Susan on board for a daytrip out that gorgeous way.

The festival itself took place in Ojai’s Libbey Park and featured scores and scores of vendors selling just about anything and everything lavender-related. Afterward we explored the shops within the arcade across the street and had lunch before paying  a visit to New Oak Ranch where for $5 they set Susan and me up with pairs of clippers and let us wade out into a fragrant breeze-blown sea of the stuff clipping our own bunches of fresh lavender.

Susan’s wanderings brought her into contact with a rabbit and some quail. The only thing I got close to were the many busy bees, and it was somewhere in the midst of my cutting that I put down the clippers and got the above close-up of that hardworker.

Afterwards we came back through the village and out the other side, stopping briefly to check-out Lake Casitas before venturing to Highway 33 and the 101 south back home.

A Flickr set of other pix from the excursion can be viewed here.

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Will

Will Campbell arrived in town via the maternity ward at Good Sam Hospital way back in OneNineSixFour and has never stopped calling Los Angeles home. Presently he lives in Silver Lake with his wife Susan, their cat Rocky, dogs Terra and Hazel, and a red-eared slider turtle named Mater. Blogging since 2001, Will's web endeavors extend back to 1995 with laonstage.com, a comprehensive theater site that was well received but ever-short on capital (or a business model). The pinnacle of his online success (which speaks volumes) arrived in 1997, when much to his surprise, a hobby site he'd built called VisuaL.A. was named "best website" in Los Angeles magazine's annual "Best of L.A." issue. He enjoys experiencing (and writing about) pretty much anything creative, explorational and/or adventurous, loves his ebike, is a better tennis player than he is horr golfer, and a lover of all creatures great and small -- emphasis on "all."