Painted Rose

Painted Rose, originally uploaded by dangeresque2.

This rose caught my eye immediately. I saw it when I was vacationing in San Francisco a few weeks ago. It has a sort of haphazardly-painted look that I really liked.

Anyway, this shot is special because of where the flower was found... In the Sonoma Valley in California. I just happened to stop in at this one particular town, Sonoma, while I was driving through looking for wineries to experience. (The Sonoma valley neighbours the more well-known Napa Valley, to the east).

As I strolled about looking for interesting things to photograph (and air-conditioning as well), I stumbled upon the Sonoma Valley visitor's centre.

I learned that Sonoma was the town where California was born, taken from Mexico in 1846, it was declared a republic by a group of American Army engineers, who without orders raised the "Bear Flag" in this town's central plaza. So, California was its own Republic for a few weeks until the people voted to join America. The bear flag then became the State flag they have still today. Look here for a more detailed explanation if you are interested (http://www.sonomavalley.com/html/mexico.php). Wow, and I was just looking for wine pictures!

The flower that you see here was growing out of the beautiful eight-acre central plaza in the town (which is very popular in towns in California as I saw throughout my trip), but this is still California's largest. Not only that, but it was the very plaza where the flag was raised on that day by the so-called "bear-flaggers", and where California was born.