In the trip to San Jose last month, we visited a small, but beautiful Japanese garden in Saratoga. It's still cool in Saratoga in June, and it's so peaceful to walk around the garden, especially in the bamboo garden. Here are some pictures of this garden in my flowerpictures site.

The Huntington Botanical garden at San Marino, California.
We spent 3 weeks in California and visiting some well-known botanical garden in the Los Angeles area such as the Huntington Library and Botanical garden, the Descanso Botanical garden. The rose garden at the Huntington garden was in full bloom and so beautiful. The desert garden and the Japanese garden are also great! Please visit my flower site to see the Huntington garden.

The Fullerton arboretum .
I'm relaxing in Hanoi now. I'm staying at my sister's in-law's house in Ho Tay (West Lake). It's a beautiful house located near Ho Tay. I can see the lake through a window in my room. It's relatively hot last week, but the weather is changing, and becomes cooler now. We'd been visiting some old Buddish pagodas around Hanoi and Ha-Tay province. I'll post their pictures later.
I'd just uploaded the pictures of the Fullerton arboretum in California, USA. I'll post the pictures of the LA arboretum later. I notice that there are many Vietnameses visiting my Flowerpictures site, would you please send me some comments, suggestions about this site (you can write in Vietnamese, if you like).
So long from Hanoi, Vietnam!

The Quail Botanical Garden.
Last month, we visited four gardens in Southern California, Quail Botanical Garden in North San Diego, LA arboretum, the arboretum at Fullerton and the Japanese garden at Cal State Long Beach. I already posted the pictures of the Japanese garden at CSLB, and today, I'd just up loaded the pictures of the Quail Botanical Garden. Please visit these gardens in my all new page reserving for the pictures of botanical gardens, arboretum and other special gardens in my Flowerpictures.net.
Today is the first day of my retirement. I feel like a normal weekend day! I'll have more time to travel, taking pictures and take care of my webpage. So please come back soon to see pictures of flowers and many interesting places that I'll visit. The first stop will be Vietnam. Vietnam is a tropical country, therefore, January-March is Spring time with plenty of flowers, please visit my website to see Vietnam the beautiful!

Koi fishes at the California State University Long Beach.
If you love koi fishes and Japanese garden, you should visit this beautiful garden at Long Beach, California. This garden is relatively small compared to other Japanese garden, but it represents all traditional features of a typical Japanese garden. I visited the garden on Wednesday, therefore, we were the only outside visitors at the garden, beside a dozen of art students drawing and painting the garden view. There is no cost to enter the garden, but you need to pay a small fee for parking.

New pictures of Chicago and Chicago Botanical Garden. We went to Chicago on the Memorial weekend with special interest on visiting the Chicago Botanical garden. The garden is very beautiful and unique, because of its special design. There are many different gardens on many "islands" on a big lake connecting with bridges. The Chicago harbor is very beautiful, but it was too crowded on the Memorial weekend. The view of the downtown Chicago from the Michigan lake is gorgeous with the Sears tower standing out in the sky! The Chinatown is small comparing to San Francisco's, but it is very nice and has good foods. We had very nice weekend in Chicago. Here are the links to Chicago and Chicago Botanical Garden in my website.