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Now that the weather is officially nice and school is officially out, I find myself longing to escape into the great outdoors or plant a garden. Here are some images I have saved to my pc (yes my pc— sorry to all you mac lovers). Hopefully they will inspire you as much as they inspire me.

via design sponge via Country Living

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The Hubble telescope is celebrating it’s 20th birthday today.  Hubble is an enormous space-based observatory that has allowed us access to incredible views of the universe in our own solar system and beyond.  According to Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope page at http://hubble.nasa.gov/ :

Hubble’s coverage of light of different colors (its “spectral range”) extends from the ultraviolet, through the visible (to which our eyes are sensitive), and into the near-infrared. Hubble’s primary mirror is 2.4 meters (94.5 inches) in diameter. Hubble is not large by ground-based standards but it performs heroically in space. Hubble orbits Earth every 96 minutes, 575 kilometers (360 miles) above the Earth’s surface.

On April 24, 1990 the space shuttle STS-31 and crew were launched to deploy the Hubble Observatory into low Earth orbit.  The Hubbles unprecedented capabilities made it one of the most powerful scientific devices ever created by humanity and has assisted in bringing public support for NASA through its unparalleled imagery.

Each discovery made by the Hubble Telescope has greatly increased the advancement of every area of astronomical research ranging from cosmology to planetary science.  Below are some of my favorite incredible imagery captured throughout Hubble’s 20 years operating in space.  All images are credited to NASA.

If you happen to have Google Earth, Google has released a plug-in to view their favorite images, including the ability to “fly” to these wonders of the universe!  http://earth.google.com/hubble20th/

Hubble Captures View of 'Mystic Mountain'. Image courtesy of NASA.

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There are all kinds of cute animals that live in the Sonoran desert. I’m particularly fond of the birds. Here are some photos I’ve taken of desert wildlife.

A hummingbird

Some kind of small brown and red bird

squirrel

A quail perhaps?

One of my favorite and probably one of the most surprising things about living the desert is how beautiful it is in the spring time.  Flowers appear everywhere on cacti, on the side of the road, in your yard, everywhere! The desert bursts forth with beautiful color. Here are some desert plants in bloom.

Our last day in San Francisco, we hopped onto a cable car, went to Fisherman’s Wharf and then Chinatown.

The San Francisco cable cars are so much fun to ride on. We caught it on Market Street, right at the turntable. they still make the cable car tracks change by hand. The car comes to the end of the line, where it gets onto a turntable, at which point two men come and push the car in a circle. When the car turns in a half circle around it stops on the tracks that go in the opposite direction.The ride itself is so much fun, albeit crowed. It its a series of ups and down on the hilly San Francisco streets. You can also see many of the traditional San Fran stops and landmarks from the car.

Once the car came to an end we ended up on Hyde Street pier.This is one of my favorite San Fran stops. It looked more like an actually pier than like Disney World, which is what I felt Fisherman’s Wharf looked like. It was was a windy, cold day, so Alan and I decided  to warm ourselves by drinking an Irish Coffee. We walked in the Buena Vista resturant, were it turns out that there is the best Irish Coffee in all of the west. It was amazing. The rest of the morning consisted of walking between the pier and eating delicious seafood.

Irish Coffee

Alan and his new friend

Old man and the sea

In the late afternoon we headed to Chinatown. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time to spend there are ended up just taking a quick walk through, and taking some fun pictures.