Exotic Gardens Storefront

Need a Christmas Cactus?  If you like cactus & succulents, you'll LOVE this funky, unique, and unassuming outdoor plant store filled with TONS of beautiful specimens...large and small.

Looking for a unique gift this holiday season for that one person that is always hard to shop for?  You may need to look no farther than your own kitchen.  Perhaps you might have bought some sweet potatoes (or were they yams?) for Thanksgiving but succumbed to the seductive convenience of the 28 oz can instead, only to later find the neglected tubers still lurking unawares in the countertop shadows, now curiously sprouting what look to be small leaves.

I am not really going to dedicate a whole entry to being cold and wet lately, but this is really not what I signed up for.  I know we live in a desert with more grass than beachgoers and we "borrow" all our water from other places, so the rainfall should be a good thing.  But it's really not.  Rain just stands in the way of walking the neighborhood and the San Diego crowd isn't really built for "weather."

Enough about that, I really wanted to post about my experience at West Coast Tavern recently.  For those that don't know, it's the restaurant formerly known as Hawthorn's underneath the North Park Theatre.  Okay, maybe not underneath, more like adjacent to.  Exact location aside, here's a photo I took

Is it as simple as 'artists'?  Take some time and think what it takes to keep the 'starving artist' in your community.   It doesn't take much for the people that made the 'community' to find somewhere else to go.

At the last Board meeting of the NPCA, the Board of Directors approved a partial reimbursement for the 32nd Street Neighborhood Enhancement Project.  This was an effort by a local couple to make a difference in our neighborhood.  If you haven't seen it, take a drive by 32nd and Redwood.

Your membership dues and donations helped us support Don and Pat's efforts, and we are all happy to have such generous and supportive neighbors.  Also, over the weekend, the McKinley Parent Teacher Council got together with San Diego Ceramic Connection for the 13th Annual Chili Cook-Off.

We had an entry in the weekend's Toyland Parade.  Before it all got started, the Pacific Coast Harmonizers had an entry in the parade and I managed to catch them warming up.  They have two performances of their Holiday Show on December 12th, see their site for more information.   Here's the video of  You Tube

For our entry, a few parents from the Under 5 Network joined in and passed out these candy canes:

But in addition to that, we saw many things that helped show why the event was such a great one.  Here are some of the highlights...

While the turkey was cooking in the oven and the pies were cooling on the countertop, our family decided to go for a walk and enjoy the beautiful sunny day. Our journey led us to Juniper Canyon. The stretch of Juniper Canyon we explored is located between Juniper Street and Nutmeg streets; the entrance can be found at the bottom the giant dip (“17% Grade”) that Juniper Street takes as you head east from 32^nd Street.