Winter Flowers in Southern California #3...and a Mural

These two bushes are Gardenias. They are growing beside the office wall at the church. The flowers are pink, red and variegated. I could have taken a better photo of the flowers but I wanted you to see the bush that doesn't have any flowers in contrast to the other. If you look closely at the bush on the left, you can see it is covered with small, round, yellowish green things. They are the flower buds. (Click to enlarge). Each bud is quite hard and tightly bound up. This bush looks like it will soon be covered with flowers, that is if the children who walk by don't pull off the buds to use them as ammunition at one another.


Further down town Carlsbad, the Carlsbad Animal Clinic is located. A number of the old buildings down town have some attractive murals on their walls. This is the one at the animal clinic.
I have tried to take this picture several times but there were always cars parked in front of it. As you can see it has a western theme. This is on one of the older streets in downtown Carlsbad. The town is quite old and was built because of the spring waters available here. They named the town after Karlsbad in Bohemia, now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. The link with Karlsbad, Bohemia is because a well was dug here in the 1880's and when the water was analyzed it was found to be equal in mineral content to this European city, one of Europe's most popular health spas. The well can still be seen beside the Coast Road, the old highway#101 that spans the length of California.

So although the town has a western flavor, (it is situated on the southern coast of California,) being so close to Mexico and once a part of Mexico it also has the Mexican influence. Many of the old ranches and lagoons still have their Mexican names. But nevertheless, it also has links with Europe through Karlsbad, Bohemia. Karlovy Vary is Carlsbad's sister city.

I took this close-up of the cactus growing by the mural because it seems to be in bloom and I have never seen one at that stage before. Again, click to enlarge.