Jacaranda Season 2008 at Chez BadMom

Yeah, my house has a white picket fence. You want to make something of it?

We are drunk with color.



Vandals. Remember Bad Neighbors? That girl and her grandmother no longer live in our neighborhood. Their apartment burned down. Rumor has it, a relative crashing at their place burned it down while free-basing something. This other vandal came well prepared. Notice that the stem is neatly sheared off, not torn.

I have noticed this thing (is it a car?) a few times during my morning commute. I ran into him near work and he said that they are building these prototypes in a nearby building. I didn't know he lived in my neighborhood as well. The neat thing about living in 'felony flats' (aside from the drug dealers), is the number of artists and inventors who live in the hood.

How did we get here?

Much ink and pixels have been spilled upon how the US became so dependent upon petroleum to move ourselves around. I've been looking around, thinking about my behavior and that of others. So far, the rising cost of gasoline has affected my family very little because of our housing choice, a townhouse close to a major employment center and a commercial district.

Why are there so few places like this in the US? Witold Rybczynski tried to explain in his book, City Life: Urban expectations in the new world. It's a very thought provoking book and I won't attempt to paraphrase it here.

I did want to mention that, once hostile natives were not a problem, American cities were laid out upon a much more spacious model than in the old world. In Europe, cities were compact because food production took place outside the city confines. In the new world of the gentleman farmer, even city dwellers grew some of their own food in their home gardens. (Not mentioned in the book is how these kitchen and flower gardens evolved into monocultures of Kentucky bluegrass from coast to coast.)

By the end of the book, I learned that Rybczynski and I both choose to live in former streetcar suburbs outside of major cities. It is a pleasant middle ground that is not readily available to other Americans, both because of their rarity in new metropolitan areas and because they are relatively expensive compared to newer suburbs. After investigation, he found no great conspiracies. People just preferred the independence of driving private automobiles over riding streetcars.

Links:

• City Life: Urban expectations in the new world
• The Red Cars of Los Angeles from the USC archives
• The Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California
• Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (You can preview portions of the book that deal with streetcars to Redondo Beach and the other Beach Cities.)
• Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn
• Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community

Aside:
People say we are lucky to live so close to work and to have such a convenient bus line. (It runs every 20-30 minutes and follows nearly the same route we would take if we drove ourselves.) Actually, luck had nothing to do with it. We made conscious choices with information that is available to everyone.

After earning my PhD, I landed two job offers. One was 30 miles inland from Mark's job. The other was at Mark's workplace. The farther job would have ensured a long commute for at least one of us.

When we bought a house, we checked the bus schedules. They are not classified state secrets, they are published. We took the buses to see if the schedules were fact or fiction--a very real problem in many areas. We checked out bicycle commute routes. I nixed neighborhoods that Mark preferred because I wasn't willing to bike so many hills on the way to work every day. (We also looked at school districts but that's too long of an aside.)

When we found we could not afford a house that we liked in an area that we liked, we looked at townhouses. After bidding on 3, we finally won a bidding war (even though we were not the highest bidder).

Jacaranda Season 2008

My favorite neighborhood jacaranda tree.

See also the view from my window and Jacaranda Season to view this tree in 2006 and 2007. If only the one in my front yard looked this good. (The reader that says Jacaranda trees bloom only every other year should be particularly interested in the spectacular blooms of this tree three years in a row.)

If you are in the south bay, drop by Isis between Rosecrans and 135th Street. Just spectacular.

I feel like I cheated because I crossed latitudes and caught the tail end of jacaranda season in New Zealand and then again in Hawaii. Three jacaranda seasons in one calendar year. I am rich.

Guerrilla Gardening

The LA Times ran a delightful story today, Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area. Also read MamaGenerica's A guerrilla gardening primer. I have been planning a series of posts about how PR has destroyed civic discourse. But, I want to say in advance, I don't mean MamaGenerica. She practices PR for the forces of good. She is a good fairy. ;-)

Blooming

When we returned from Hawaii, our garden was abloom. The ignored epiyphyllum in the side yard.

Yup, the blooms really are that large. Read Call it orchid cactus or epiphyllum, it's a plant that hangs around in the LA Times.

Rob named his blog, Are you cereus? after the plant. He also has a website with fantastic photography featuring epiphyllums. Don't miss it.

The LA Times article mentions the difficulty of finding specimens for sale because they are rarely sold commercially. I bought mine at the Huntington Library Annual Plant Sale. Coincidentally, this year's sale is May 17-18, 2008. I am headed over there for members' only day (for the plant sale), May 17. Let me know if you want to come along as a guest. The rarest stuff goes the first day.

The Japanese irises had popped open in our absence, too.

The sea pink aka sea thrift are a bit past their prime.

I love this bed of roses outside the Redondo Beach main library. They have just a hint of shell pink.

These orchids are 2 months past their prime, but still lovely. They look like they might be the same type Wandering Scientist showed in You're So Vein.

Iris choose these orchids at Trader Joe's for mother's day. She made me pay for it, though. No need to adjust your monitor. The pot contains TWO types of orchids, one white and one pink.

Obligatory Earth Day Post

The Beach Cities Health District installed vegetable gardens at area schools, complete with drip irrigation, organic soil and fertilizer. Each classroom takes care of a raised bed of vegetables. Today, Earth Day, the kids began to harvest the fruits of their labor.

Free-range tomatoes! (Look ma, no cage!)

Organic strawberries.

Look at the size of these radishes.

Thanks to Janel Bagby from Beach Cities Health District and parent volunteer, Kim Dunn. (Parent volunteer, Lisa, and another BCHD employee did not arrive in time for the picture.)

Iris came home talking about how spinach is the most nutritious vegetable and how she wanted to try it. I found some spinach in the freezer and made creamed spinach out of it. She took one bite and pushed it away. She did eat her soba and tofu though.

The Enchanted Camellia Forest

I didn't think we had a shot of getting Iris out of the house to go to Descanso Gardens today. So I asked her if she would like to visit the enchanted camellia forest. It worked.

This winter was kinder to the camellias than last year.


The cherry trees were also in bloom.

As were the magnolias.





Interpretive dance for the horticultural set.

Like our trip last year, we stopped at downtown Montrose's Honolulu avenue for lunch first at Pho 21. (We were sorely tempted by the BBQ at Zeke's Smokehouse.) We tried a tart frozen yogurt at Yolicious yogurt and then I bought a couple of skeins of Alpaca Silk at Needle in a Haystack.

We were saddened to see that Once Upon a Time Bookstore, one of the finest children's bookstores around, had to move to much smaller quarters. Color me mine, a chain where you can paint your own ceramics, will soon open at their old location.

There was some sort of street fair in addition to the regular farmer's market. It is hard to believe that Montrose is 13 miles from downtown Los Angeles. It's picture perfect today.

Spring has Sprung

Yippee!

Buying Time

I attended a national science meeting all this week (not the one pictured to the left) while sleeping in my own bed. The downside was, I had to drive to the Pasadena Convention Center each day. It is only 29 miles each way, but the route takes me through downtown Los Angeles and several of the busiest freeway interchanges in the US.

Luckily, I have a Prius with a special sticker that lets me drive in the carpool lane even when driving solo. It made the drive a bearable 40-50 minutes each way. Without it, it would have taken 2 1/2 hours by public transit or 40-80 minutes driving solo each way. (It is so totally not fair, but more about that later.) I now know why Angelenos are so obsessed with traffic.

Guess which meeting I attended? We joked about the scarcity of funds to study earth science and how we could probably learn something by going across the courtyard.











Along the drive, I got to enjoy views of blooming Chorisia (aka Silk Floss) trees. I downloaded this picture from the Huntington Gardens "What's Blooming" web page. Click the photo to view it full res on their site. The Wikipedia entry about Chorisia speciosa says this tree blooms in February to May. This is definitely NOT Feb-May. What gives? It is a South American tree. In the northern hemisphere, the bloom season will be shifted about 6 months. I found a motherlode of spectacular pictures of Chorisia speciosa at Dave's Garden website.

Our garden also shows signs of fall. The Japanese anemones are abloom. Look at the homely brown-tinged leaves near the ground. Who would have guessed that they would send up 4 foot tall spikes holding half a dozen flowers apiece?

It grows in deep shade which creates a surprising contrast of drifts of white petals in the darkest corners of the garden.

I just want to stare into their eyes and save the memory until the next time. Individual flowers do not last long, but the bloom season can last a few weeks.


Back to the traffic war stories. If you live in Los Angeles long enough, you know about Sigalerts. You can see a map of real-time traffic speeds in the whole region. Put your mouse on a dot and a window pops up with information about that locale.

This morning, there was a big fat red diamond next to my route. I moved my mouse over and learned that there had been a fatality on a neighboring freeway that had backed up onto my route. Fortunately, I had a hunch it wouldn't spill over into the carpool lane and I was right.

The other lanes were another story. They were backed up for miles. Suddenly, a small American car crossed the double double yellow lines to enter the carpool lane right in front of me. That is strictly verboten. There are stiff fines for jumping into the carpool lane outside of designated merge areas and she was also driving solo.

Did I get mad? No, I saw her in time and braked for her. I could sense her urgency and desperation. I intuitively knew that she HAD to get to work on time and she NEEDED to keep her job. No one drives a small American car in LA unless they are poor.

Seriously, with all the gigantic SUVs and trucks on LA roads, you risk life and limb driving a small car. People who drive fuel efficient cars out of principle tend to buy imported cars with all the latest safety equipment that Detroit does NOT put in their small cars.

Driving LA freeways during rush hour is a novel and eye-opening experience for me (because I live so close to work and both are near the beach). Usually, I am not in contact with people who drive small American cars out of economic necessity. This week, I saw plenty of them. I could see their tension and anxiety. Sometimes, I worried that parts of their car would fall off right there on the freeway. Imagine how they felt as all the SUVs and luxury European and Japanese sedans rolled past them.

Back to the woman who cut me off. I passed her later when we were close to downtown. As I expected, she was a black woman--not young, not old--just a ball of tension, leaning into the steering wheel which she held in a death grip. Who am I to question her need to get somewhere fast? Isn't that why I bought a Prius with the carpool OK sticker? I bought my way out of traffic hassles legally because legislators pandered for my vote. They, and Detroit automakers, don't give a rat's ass about her.

Aside:
A lawyer attorney friend told me that one of the other attorneys at her firm always drove his European sedan in the carpool lane solo. He figures that it is a cost-effective time saver because he gets fined only about once a year so. After all, the fine is only about $300 and he charges $500 per hour for his time.

Surfing Hummingbird Style

The beach cities of Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo are arguing with Huntington Beach to the south over bragging rights to the name, Surf City USA. Well, the hummingbirds were doing it first.

My coworker, BAM over at Breathing Treatment, posted today about fashioning copper pipes into a fountain to attract hummingbirds. We can attest to the efficacy of this tactic.




Last weekend, I wondered why we haven't seen any hummingbirds yet. Iris and I normally watch them drink from the fountain and "surf" on the jet of water each morning. It makes for great breakfast-time entertainment.

Our hummingbird visitors are late in appearing this year; this is the first one we saw. However, it lingered for some time. I wonder where the mate is? Last year, they came in a pair.



Our garden was designed and built by Pacific Coast Landscape in Redondo Beach. If you check out their web page of residential services, click on water features. Water feature #6 in the slide show should look awfully familiar.

Clothesline Again

Wash day at my sister's is awfully pretty. Wash day at my house is more mundane, unless I have been up to some tie-dyeing or shibori.

I didn't knit at all this weekend. Instead, I have been gardening and doing laundry. Like several commentators said, we hang our clothes inside out on the line. We also wash them inside out to minimize fading and wear on the clothes. Shirts are tumbled in the dryer for a few minutes and then hung up damp.

In Boulder, we lived in a house wired for electricity circa WWI. Plugging in an iron without tripping the circuit breaker involved unplugging everything else in the house except the refrigerator first. I figured, if ironing ate up that many watts, then not ironing would be the patriotic and green thing to do. I thought of this 15 years before Thomas Friedman wrote about it.

We smooth the plackets, collars and hems down by hand while the shirts are damp and look slightly rumpled most of the time. We are scientists after all; people find us more credible when we look rumpled. We iron only when attending special functions and, of course, when I am sewing.

Isn't the clothespin bag in the shape of a dress and apron adorable? I bought it from an elderly lady near Chama, New Mexico. I spotted a sign in her front yard that said, "Quilts For Sale" and made Mark stop. The quilts were polyester doubleknit, her handmade dolls were exquisite and priced accordingly, but the clothespin bags were the perfect souvenir.

The Siberian irises are abloom in the front yard. A friend and neighbor gave me the irises when she divided her corms. I like it when neighbors share plants and seeds. It makes a neighborhood a neighborhood. I have a bunch of flower and vegetable seeds to give away if you drop by the house. If you bring a bucket, you can dig up some anemones, too.

Peonies are abloom in the bedroom. Mark is really a good sport. He sleeps on pink sheets and our bed faces pink (really, plum blossom) curtains, and he has never complained. Come to think of it, he might not have noticed yet.

Iris got the butterflies set with a matching blue and green lava lamp. Iris put the green heart up for Valentine's day. We like it too much to take it down.

Orchids are abloom in the bathroom. I would like to turn the bathtub we rarely use into a greenhouse so that I can collect more orchids.

House and Garden

The hot water in the master bath had become increasingly unreliable. The twin townhome behind our house had a similar problem several years ago. We learned from their experience that the pipes for that bathroom run diagonally under the living room and up the back south wall up to the second floor bathroom. (Why such a convoluted route? We can only surmise that it had to do with NOT drilling a hole for a pipe through the earthquake beam that runs across the middle of our house between the floors.)

We followed the pipe and heard a very bad gurgling sound coming from this corner of the living room. No, it was not coming from the subwoofer (wrapped in the Indian ikat fabric).

Unlike our back neighbor, the leak was not in the middle of the living room floor. It was accessible from the outside wall. Now, to find a mason who can repair the brick facing.







Iris helped me do a little spring cleanup in the garden today. She is learning to distinguish between the things we want to grow and the weeds. She was disappointed that the alliums we planted last Fall did not come up.


Years ago, I planted some columbines. Even though my gardening book says they are biennals, they keep coming up. At least, the red California one does. The blue Colorado columbine stopped coming back. It is like the flowers know where they belong. The blue one by my front door in Boulder invariably came back up each summer. I took this picture with a flash just before sunset.

I took another picture without the flash. What a difference.

Another gratuitous shot of the garden. I do love it when the sea pinks come back each summer.


Iris and I even harvested some food.

There was a famous gardening article about the $4000 (or some astronomical figure) tomato. I don't want to calculate how much this strawberry cost. That is besides the point. We grow food so Iris feels a connection to the food chain.

January 1

January brings Camellia blooms to southern California. We planted 10 Camelia Japonicas (Jordan's Pride) trees in summer 2000. They are 8-11 feet tall now. Don't the big, fat buds just fill you with anticipation?


The picture in the nursery link above shows a much more deeply hued flower than we observe. Ours are a more delicate pink. Some are striped. ( Gardeners call them "peppermint".)






Oh, yeah! I stopped reading and started knitting.

After much dithering, I decided to go with the "Bergmar" motifs on pages 24-25 of The Best of Lopi. Only two colors are used on any given row. However, the first row has a seven stitch float! I tried twisting the yellow behind the purple with uneven results. It shows in some places.

Note that I carry the dominant color continental style and drop the secondary color, throwing it with my right hand as needed. I also knit the tube inside out. Hopefully, by leaving the floats on the outside diameter of the tube, the tension will not be too tight.

Here is a close-up of the yoke.

This is the progress so far. Knitting the sleeves first and then joining to the body for the yoke made me nervous. I didn't want to get stuck with the wrong length sleeves after putting in all that work. So I used a provisional cast-on with waste yarn. After I try the completed sweater body on, I can decide how long to make the sleeves. EZ was right. It is fun to go round and round on the decreasing yoke with the pattern developing before my eyes. I really am getting along "like a house on fire".

I put the cone of blue cotton yarn that I used for the provisional crochet cast-on just to show off. If you live in LA, the Marukai 98 Cent store in south Torrance on Hawthorne Boulevard is selling entire cones of cabled cotton yarn (in ~10 colors) for $7.98. Although the only thing the label says is "Made in Japan", it looks and feels like the stuff I bought last summer for Plum Blossom. The wrapper for that yarn said 100% Peruvian cotton made in Japan.

That's all folks.

Life Simplification Continues

The health news continues to be so-so to not so good at chez badmom. Therefore, life simplification continues. We replaced our groundcover area, which was mostly weeds and mud, with fake grass. Exhibit A a day before the contractors arrived.
Exhibit B from June 2006. Note all the bare patches and weeds.
After. The grass looks a bit too shiny in the bright sun but quite realistic under most lighting conditions by the beach (foggy).The sun is setting earlier and the nights are cooler. That can only mean...japanese anemones.
See the buds forming on the japonica camellias next to the anemones?