While Mom is out and about looking for food (or taking a break from parenting)
the youngsters are staying close to home.
After all, the first lesson every Californian ground squirrel learns is: “If it has feathers and comes at you from above – go underground. Double quick!”
Grey squirrels in parks
have a different strategy: “If it has feathers and comes at you from above – climb a tree. Double quick!”
Out of Art Deco, enthusiastically adopted in the US, grew a style unique to the United States – Streamline Moderne. It evolved in the ’30s and was both a modern continuation and a reaction to Art Deco, which surprisingly enough is not a contradiction, although at first it seems to be one.
Streamline Moderne reflected the more austere economic times of the ’30s. Some Art Deco elements were kept, but generally sharp angles and lines became more aerodynamically rounded, excessive ornaments gave way to clean surfaces and – very important – modern materials like cement and glass were used to replace exotic woods and stone.
In Los Angeles the Lydecker House is usually quoted as a prime example of a residential building in the Streamline Moderne style. But there are many, many private houses around showing the rounded lines, the curved windows, the portholes so typical of that style.
Even more houses show only some of the elements – just some curved lines, one or two porthole windows; that was enough at that time to deem the house “modern” and satisfy the buyer that he or she was totally “with it.”
And then one can find something like this:
Here the theme of the rounded lines and the portholes has been taken to a certain extreme, in keeping with the name “The Good Ship Grace.” This building was originally a radio station for Christian broadcasting. Then the radio station moved out to Riverside and the structure just sits there – empty and as an example of a very unique American style.
The hot Sunday was followed by a broiling hot Monday. Due to the winds coming in from the Mojave Desert, temperatures in Downtown Los Angeles rose to 100°F (37,7°C). The forecast for today is just a bit lower, back to 94°F.
It is a bit difficult to keep cool or at least comfortable, if one hates A/C. But it is possible.
This beautiful Husky however had every reason to look a bit downtrodden and less energetic than Huskies usually do.
I looked at him, he looked at me, and I could read his mind: “Los Angeles in summer is not a good place to be. Heck, most of the time it’s too hot for me even in what you call winter!”
With the weather report forecasting high temperatures of up to 93°F, we started early on our hike in the Deukmejian Wilderness Park. This park is another one of those lovely areas which escaped the fate of being “developed” through the City of Glendale buying the land and turning it into a recreational area.
It took only a very short while to discover a patch of green, dotted with lovely yellow flowers.
It turned out that these pretty little things are Ice Plants (Carpobrotus edulis), quite aggressive invaders. Brought to California in the early 1900s as a stabilizer for soil along railroad tracks, Caltrans was one of the companies who planted thousands of acres of it all over Southern California. C. edulis, originally from Africa, took a good look around, decided that SoCal was just the place to be and started doing what C. edulis does best – it spread. And spread. And spread some more. Today the plant has become a serious ecological problem, posing a threat to the local flora and has to be fought.
The next pretty sight was the Californian State flower, the Golden Poppy (Eschscholzia californica).
Now this truly is a native plant and always lovely to look at. Not that the Ice Plant isn’t lovely, but I found it quite interesting to see two plant species only about 20 paces apart from each other – one an intruder, one a native.
I bet that the driver of this car is female and was pretty excited when Daddy presented her with the car.
Somehow I do not see males declaring their affection for the sponsor of the vehicle they drive on their license plates.
But then again, I might be wrong.
Even before the first Mini (the car, that is) appeared on the scene in the UK, the Italians already had their first ‘micro car” out and running: the Fiat 500.
Fiat started building the Fiat 500 in 1957 and continued this model until 1975. Minor modifications were made, but basically the Fiat 500 stayed what it was planned to be: a cheap, tiny car with a 2-cylinder air-cooled motor with a maximum speed of about 70 miles per hours. In short – and that can be taken literally with a length of less than 3 meter (116.9 in) – it was the perfect city car.
And not only that, people traveled in these little cars. Not the distances one is used from the US, but I remember that an aunt of mine came up to the North of Germany from near Munich with one of these tiny little things; and that would have been a distance of roughly 500 miles.
So imagine my delight when I saw this cutie today in front of a Trader Joe’s:
Somehow it gave the expression “mint condition” a totally new meaning; and reminded me of those days of my youth when a Fiat 500 was not a rare exotic vehicle, but an everyday car you saw at every corner.
While finally getting around to taking a photo of the lovely Phalaenopsis currently gracing our home, I remembered a piece I had read a few days ago about Germans and their strictness when it comes to obeying rules, written and unwritten ones. The author of that article praised the punctuality of German trains and buses, but was horrified by the habit of Germans to arrive on time for a dinner party.
Ouch. Yes. That is indeed a nasty habit: to arrive on time, when one is invited for a sit-down dinner somebody has probably spent a lot of time planning and cooking for. Those Germans. How dare they!
There are cultural differences in the degrees of politeness. In my opinion somebody arriving 20, 30 (or even more) minutes late when the invitation was explicitly for dinner would be extremely impolite. That same person would probably consider me a rude German, because I would then usher all guests immediately to the table, before the food is overcooked/cold/tough; you name it.
And then I stopped my musings. All our friends know that I am German. They all turn up punctually for dinner invitations. They all must either know how Germans cherish punctuality – or they are simply afraid of my wrath.
In any case, I wave my orchid of peace like an olive branch (after all, it is nearly Easter) and vow not to slip into prejudices about Americans and punctuality.
I like cooking dinner. It is a transition period to glide from the working day into a pleasant work free evening; so cooking might be classified as a hobby for me, soothing for the nerves and with a tasty result in the end.
As with every hobby, one needs toys. I finally found one I had craved for quite a while – a double-burner stove top grill pan.
With this nice, sturdy, heavy-duty pan roasted vegetables are done in no time.
Sprinkled with olive oil, lime juice, salt and fresh ground pepper, they can rest while some pork chops rubbed with basil are being grilled.
Add a salad, some wine and a friend = a perfect meal for three with a preparation time of 30 minutes from start to finish.
As I said, cooking is a hobby. And I love my new toy.
It’s the time of the year again when mockingbirds and starlings are checking out the most desirable spaces to start nesting and raise the brood. Mockingbirds move into lushly green trees, starlings into more barren spaces underneath eaves and rain gutters. Both camps seem to be of the opinion that they have a wing up over the other. “Living in a tree – how can one?” “A hole in a wall – those guys just don’t have taste!”
Anyway, when mockingbirds and starlings prepare to decorate their nests in preparation for starting yet another family, crows get interested in the area too. The idea of a fresh egg for breakfast or – even better a while later – a juicy fledgling has a certain allure for the average crow.
Needless to say, mockingbirds and starlings do not quite share this view towards their offspring. As pesky as the young may be, they are definitely not breakfast. And so the fight is on again; any crow hanging out too long in the neighborhood is chased away by mockingbirds. It is not a rare sight to see one crow winging it, being chased by two or three mockingbirds in hot pursuit. Starlings do not take part in those “keep the neighborhood clean” flights – no crow can invade a nest under a rain gutter or some eaves. “That’s why we live in a hole in the wall, silly!”
This morning this female Purple Finch and I were treated again to some amazing flight scenes.
Those mockingbirds do not fool around. David against Goliath comes to mind every time. And just like way back then – smaller is smarter, faster and better.
I am quite sure that the three mockingbirds afterwards congratulated each other on a job well done.
It took us nearly half a year after Desert Rose on Hillhurst opened to set foot in the place. Why? Well, how can one keep a straight face eating at a restaurant adorned with the tackiest 15 ft. glass rose ever in front? So, as I said, it took roughly six month before we decided that we might have seen that oddity often enough to get used to it and not burst out laughing just at the mere sight.
Now comes the surprise: The place is nice. The service is charming. The wine list is interesting. The food is good. One might even say, the food borders on being excellent. I am quite game to go back and investigate some more whether I can uphold that last impression.
Baked Brie
Tabbouleh Salad
Linguine with Sirloin
Plus, they have an extensive variety of whiskeys; maybe one day they’ll print out a list for the servers to read from, so that customers do no have to toddle up to the bar to check out the goodies themselves.
The biggest plus however is – no, they do not light up that rose thing out in front. At least not glaringly so. So I managed to keep a straight face and did not burst out laughing at the only thorn at the Desert Rose.