Friday July 1 - Sunday July 3 (Port Orchard)

..Friday
We had a quiet day today. I caught up with my washing as well as my blog, (eventually!). 

I did take some time in the afternoon to sit on the swing and Serenity came over to join me for a while. 

She still barks at me when I come down the stairs, lol, she is protecting her (human) mum!

Saturday

After a late breakfast we went to Elandan gardens, located on the Kitsap Peninsula (Puget Sound). It is home to the world class bonsai museum. 

It spreads over six acres and contains over 300 bonsai trees. It was founded in 1993 and is internationally known for bonsai collection and the work of bonsai artist Dan Robinson. Many rare species are featured including a Rocky Mountain Juniper that is nearly 1500 years old. 

The trees come from Asia, Europe and North America and most have been collected by the owner. He chooses not to use the traditional method that includes root cutting to keep the trees small. 

Instead he leaves them in their pots and allows nature to do the rest. He does train the branches as well as trim them to give them shape. 

Wire is used to train some and it is removed before it can damage the branch. Some of the trees are almost in statis with just a small amount of growth each year.

All the trees have healthy looking leaves even though some of them look as if all the wood in them is dead or nearly dead. He sculpts the wood to make interesting designs. 

There was a full size tree, a Fragrant Himalayan Rhododendron, with white flowers that were almost finished, they flowered two months early this year. 

Dan picked the best of those remaining and handed it to me, the fragrance was beautiful and I could imagine what it would be like to walk through a forest of these trees when in full bloom.  

There were some lovely views out onto Puget Sound with the Naval Shipyard across the water. There are also some statues among the trees and the setting as a whole was quite delightful.

Inside the shop there were many varied gift items and, also a cat called Big Boy. He spends his days sleeping on a chair and often goes out at night. Sometimes they will arrive in the morning and find something on the floor and even broken, lol!!

We went back home and after a delicious tea which included some of the Red Lobster biscuits that I really love, yum!!

After tea, we went to the Rodeo Drive In movie place and saw two films, "Finding Dory", which was rather cute and funny, and "BFG", a bit of a film with a difference! There are three different screens so there is a choice so it was very busy. I have never been to a drive in before so it was quite the experience. As the films did not begin until dusk, about 10 pm, it was 2.30 am before we got back home!! 

Sunday
I did not wake up until late after the early morning, lol!! We went to to a Chinese Buffet for lunch, there were a lot of different dishes, hot and freshly cooked. The food was very tasty and we were lucky as they have crab legs on a Sunday! I grabbed a Starbucks coffee from Safeways just by the lunch place.

We took a detour on the way home to see if there were any eagles at the place which is good for viewing them. There were  few sitting among the trees. I only had my IPad but hopefully we will also see some more on Tuesday (look for the white dot, lol!!!). I did some ironing when we got home and started packing away some of my things ready for Wednesday.