Spring Critters (April 26, 2011)

Spring not only brings new flowers, it also brings new critters to the neighborhood. Although many people prefer puppies and kittens, it’s time to celebrate an animal that often goes unnoticed, or (cover the kids’ ears) even may be smashed: the slow-and-steady snail. (They really are amazing creatures. More on this in a future blog.)

There are bunnies, of course. How could we have spring without bunnies? This one happens to be made of cake and frosting. I made him to bring to an Easter egg hunt at a friend’s house. Used fruit leather for his ears and for the bunny butt butterfly.

Don’t forget the fashionable flamingo, my fave animal. He’s the well-dressed door man near my neighbor’s front stairs, and always has seasonal attire.

And call me paranoid, but I always feel like somebody’s watching me…

Spring Plants and Flowers and Colors, Oh My! (April 25, 2011)

Every morning when I shut my front door behind me, I’m setting out on an adventure in the streets near home. I’m excited to see which flowers and plants have grown or opened overnight, changing the look of the whole neighborhood, little by little. Each morning brings change in spring. Sometimes the changes seem huge, like a bare tree suddenly crowned with bright green leaves. Other times I notice subtle changes, as though I’m looking at my neighborhood through a kaleidoscope, turning it only a fraction of an inch each morning. The colors stay the same but some are bigger the next day. Certain things have changed shape since the day before. It looks familiar but different enough that you notice the change. This is the magic of spring.



(I have mixed feelings about blogging about spring. I’m sure there are about a zillion posts out there about spring, and I know that my enthusiasm for this season is not unusual. But it’s my blog and each of us does see the world a little differently. A blog is like your thumbprint. It may have similarities to everyone else’s, but it also has completely unique features. And if my handful of loyal readers doesn’t mind that I’m yapping about plants again, then yap I will!)



For months I’ve been taking photos of plants and flowers in my neighborhood. When you live in Southern California, there’s always something in bloom. While we may not be snowed in each winter, spring is noticeable here. I could put hundreds of photos of plants in this post (note to self: sort and label recent photos. Additional note to self: sort and label last year’s photos, too!) But I’ll try to pick just a few that particularly grabbed me. Spring is a fiesta of new smells, sounds (baby birds chirping, and in our case, a jack hammer next door) and colors, and I’m happy to have been invited.

Mini but Mighty (April 16, 2011)

Wonder Woman is alive and well. I would know. She lives around the corner from me.

Last month I finally met her. For years I’d wondered who owned the home where plumeria plants peek over the side gate. A gardening junkie like me, I figured, but I’d never seen her. Was she a nocturnal gardener, sprinkling fairy dust and fertilizer by the light of the moon? The mystery gripped me.

At last I glimpsed her as she pulled weeds from her front lawn one morning. I crossed the street, making a beeline for her, and introduced myself. She straightened up to maybe five feet tall (and that’s only because she was wearing red high heels), smiled, and chirped, “Hi, I’m Wanda, I love to garden and I’m ninety years old!”

We chatted for half an hour and she had the pep of someone half her age. I asked if I was tiring her out but she said her doctor wants her to get out and do things each day, that it’s how she stays young! She has lived in her house since 1956, and offered to show me her back yard, which is on a canyon that used to have cows in it before more houses were built. I followed her to the back. Who am I to refuse a 90-years-young gardening enthusiast in high heels?

Her husband built her a greenhouse fifty years ago, but a neighbor reported it to the city as being too big a structure. Their solution? Literally to cut it in half to comply with the city’s rules. The result is two smaller greenhouses in back. It’s a little funky, but as you know, I like funky better than formal. I like people, places and things that have a fun back story, so these two halves delighted me! The houses are as solid as ever, with slatted benches inside for drainage and a variety of plants, which she talks to and nurtures.

Wanda told me about owning a wedding floral service years ago, and she still knows the names of nearly all of her plants. I asked about a potted plant that looked like a kalanchoe variety, but with leaves smaller than I’ve seen before. It has tiny red flowers as its blooms, and I thought it was cute. She gave it to me but turned down my offer to bring something by to return the favor, saying she has quite a few plants already! This kalanchoe plant is like its original owner: both are small but resilient. I put Wanda’s plant with the other potted succulents I have in my yard and when I water it, I think of her. This is one of the many great things about gardening and gardeners—it’s easy to share plants because they keep growing, and the sharing brings people together.

Gardening is great for so many reasons. Unlike many of life’s projects, with gardening you quickly see the results of effort given, whether it’s through weeding, or in the growth of new leaves. Spending time outdoors with my plants always makes me feel better. I see new leaves and flowers each day. I feel good nurturing my plants, so they grow, so I nurture more, and they grow more. A happy cycle. Wanda’s gardening most likely contributes to her physical health but also to her emotional state. Researchers have found that people who interact with plants handle everyday stress and mental fatigue better than those who do not. For me, gardening really does provide a natural high. My drug of choice? Soil!

What’s Wanda’s secret to her longevity? Is it wearing red heels at age ninety, a refusal to be practical when colorful heels provide such gusto? Is it her optimism and enthusiasm? Her sense of humor? Her passion for plants? It’s everything. Wanda is an inspiration. This lady doesn’t need magic cuff bracelets to convince me. She really is Wonder Woman.

New Spring Line (March 31, 2011)

It's Spring! (This is hardly headline news, I realize. Even if you haven't checked today's date or your neighbor's gardens, you knew Spring was here, right? After all, the designers revealed the Spring Fashions in November, and the department stores displayed swimwear on December 26.)

The new Spring fashion line is as unpredictable as ever. Why not pair sun hats with respirators? Stilettos with bee keeper's hat? Bikinis with bug zappers?

In truth, the getup above was born out of necessity rather than the result of my reaching blind-folded for whatever was in front of me. You see, the backyard weeds are growing faster than Charlie Sheen's ego. While I can convince myself for a while that they are native plants, at some points the weeds reach a level I can't stand a minute longer. I reached this point last week, and so I dug out the weed-whacker and went crazy on the back yard. Good arm workout. Instant results. Immediate allergy attack.

When the front yard weeds could not be ignored a second longer, I decided to dress for (weeding) success and donned my sun hat as well as a respirator. Bingo! No allergy attack.

And really, it's kind of a cute look. (My neighbors must think so since they were looking at me as I struck fashionable poses while chopping weeds.) Kind of Lady GaGa-ish, I think!

Trunk Show (March 17,2011)

Here is the humorous tale of the junk in my car. This is a true story and no part of it has been exaggerated so as to enhance the story.

If you are obsessive about keeping your car’s interior tidy, stop reading right now. You may not be able to handle this.

But if, like me, you are a parent of young kids, you may get a laugh from this complete list of what was in my car yesterday. I love to amuse people, so I’m opening my life (and the back of my car) to you, all in the name of a shared laugh.

At 6pm yesterday I removed most of what was in the back of my car and took these photos. The first two photos show what was in the car, and the last shows my kitchen after I cleaned up the mess (the mess looked daunting but actually only took about 20 minutes to tidy). I am not eager to live among drifts of clutter, but I’ve accepted it as part of having young kids. This whole thing is a good reminder that we must laugh at what drives us crazy. Here’s what was in my Storage Facility on wheels:

· 1 umbrella stroller
· 1 double stroller
· 1 single stroller
· 1 backpack for carrying baby
· 1 Baby Bjorn, a front-carrying gizmo
· My purse
· My son’s backpack
· My son’s lunchbox
· My son’s jacket
· 1 wrist brace
· 1 plastic spoon
· 1 baby bottle
· 2 sippy cups
· 3 water bottles
· Empty cups
· Sand from beach
· 59 shells from beach
· 1 pair of my son’s socks
· 5 mismatched socks
· 4 pairs of kids’ shoes
· 1 sun visor
· 1 knit hat
· I wide-brimmed sun hat
· 1 diaper bag
· 9 clean diapers
· 2 reusable grocery bags
· Extra kids’ clothes
· 1 large empty canister with lid
· 5 pinecones
· 1 tree pod
· 1 Thomas the Train playing card
· 1 fridge magnet
· Approximately 200 discarded Cheerios
· Wrapped candy left over from Valentines’ Day
· 7 preschool work sheets
· 8 ballpoint pens
· 1 baby toy
· 1 maxi-pad still in its wrapper
· 1 almost-empty bottle of sunscreen
· Back-up bottle of sunscreen (also nearly empty)
· Gum wrappers
· Tupperware
· 1 jar lid
· 1 kids’ electric toothbrush
· 1 bib
· 2 baby blankets
· 1 bag of pretzels
· 1 unopened bag of dehydrated fruit snacks
· 1 emergency kit
· Other miscellaneous stuff, not worth cataloguing

If you have spent more than one hour with small children, you know that they need gear. Now I may have overdone it, having 9 extra diapers in the car, but here’s the thing: I sometimes throw in 2 or 3 extra, because (believe me), you do not want to be caught empty-handed when you need a diaper, and if you’re too busy to count how many are already in the car, tossing in 2 or 3 extras makes sense!

In my defense, the car was merely cluttered, not unsanitary! A friend once vomited after being in his girlfriend’s car, because it was so filled with stuff (probably stuff that smelled). I’m nowhere near that league! There are no dead animals or moldy food specimens in my ride. Simply a lot of stuff.

Usually I have just one stroller in the back, a folding umbrella-style. But yesterday we were away from home for hours and I included the larger stroller because it holds more. Also, we picked up a double stroller someone was selling on Craigslist, so the 3 strollers in one day thing is not my norm. But it is funny! All the other multiple things are really just my attempt to be prepared, responsible mom. Gotta have protection from the sun, in the form of hats as well as sunscreen. Gotta feed and hydrate the kids. Gotta have them brush their teeth on the way to school. Am trying to be earth-friendly with my reusable grocery bags. Stuff like pinecones are not so much in the “gotta have” category but I live with a young collector and we were at the park yesterday, so the 5 pinecones were souvenirs. Same for shells and sand.

Ever so occasionally, I drag out the vacuum and attack the sand, dirt, cheerios and crumbs in the car. But really, what’s the point? Kids have magic powers when it comes to messifying a place you’ve just cleaned. Someday I won’t be schlepping diapers and strollers but by then I’ll probably be painting more again, and if you think moms carry around a lot of stuff in the back of their cars, you should see painters’ cars!

Look! Look! Look Again! (Feb. 16, 2011)

If you read my last blog, you know the joy I take in stumbling upon a happy surprise. A few days ago we were in Riverside, CA on business and I had an hour to kill. In driving around I passed something so cool I had to circle the block for another look. It’s Tio’s Tacos, a landmark in Riverside, as well as one of the coolest visual spectacles I’ve seen in some time. It’s a restaurant, sure. Or is it a museum and artist’s studio, rolled into one, where they happen to sell food?

As I drove by, what caught my attention was the giant human figure made of beer cans, sitting atop the second-floor roof. Once I parked I realized there was more. So much more! In back of the restaurant is a huge courtyard, filled with unique creations of recycled, repurposed materials. Being a mosaic enthusiast, I loved seeing the many funky tiled tables, as well as the found object art, items from everyday life embedded in the cement underfoot. Phones? Yes. Toys? Countless. Shells? Car parts? Tools? Of course. Imagination times a million. A lot of the creations have a playful feel but there are macabre elements, too. Masks, headless creatures. Halloween plus Dia De Lots Muertos. A cornucopia of colors and patterns.

Apparently Martin Sanchez, the owner, has not thrown away anything in seventeen years, and creates art from the materials. Hundreds of beer bottles form a teepee-like structure with a bottle cap chandelier inside. There are other outbuildings, decorated on every surface. There are animals, and many figures, some fifteen feet tall. Plants grow out of some of the objects, giving it a lost city feel. What I took from our unexpected adventure was a happy reminder not to take life, or myself, so seriously. A healthy dose of silliness is good medicine. And magic.

My First Piece (Feb. 11, 2011)

Yesterday a stranger pawed through the weeds, ripped something out of the dirt and thrust it at me. I learned of a man’s baseball career long ago, and I became the proud new owner of a relic from the 60s.

In the seven years we’ve lived here, I’d walked by a house a few blocks away hundreds of times, but last week something looked different. A big hole had been dug between the sidewalk and the hedges in front of their house. I noticed something next to the hole, and looked twice. Nearly covered in weeds was a piece of decorative cement block from the late 1950s or 60s. I’m obsessed with the stuff, and I got all excited. I decided to write the owners a note, asking if I could have it if they weren’t using it.

About six months ago I began to notice decorative cement block, and once I started looking for it, I saw more and more, which lead me to wonder how I could have ever not noticed it before! It was used as an accent in midcentury homes, both a functional element (because it could be stacked into walls or screens) and an ornamental detail. In my neighborhood, I occasionally see some of this block, but in other neighborhoods it’s on almost every house.

Back to the present. A woman called me yesterday, saying her grandfather owns the house where I’d left the note, and I could talk to him about the cement block. He’s in a wheel chair, in his 70s, and has lived in the house 46 years. I told him about my interest in architecture and how unusual it is to find cement block like this. He proposed going outside to look at it and as he was wheeled out the door I finally took my eyes off him and noticed a whole screen of cement block, dividing his living room from the kitchen. I’ve been in dozens of houses in this neighborhood and not one has an interior screen of block, so this was really unusual. I was beside myself!

Outside, we squinted in the bright sun. I pointed out the block but he was more interested in telling me about himself, which was fine. He reminded me of my former neighbor Cecil, who was also elderly and craved conversation. For the house-bound, any new face coming around must be an unexpected gift. He told about how he once played baseball and had met Joe DiMaggio and Tony Guinn. He’d batted .400 in a Mexican league and even I know that’s a great average! He talked about buying his house in the 60s for something like $30,700. His granddaughter stepped in after a while, saying they needed to get going. I thanked them again, loaded my new old piece of cement block into the truck, and drove home.

Later, I washed off the dirt and weeds and got giddy as I stared at my first piece of cement block. For more than 6 months I’ve studied at least a hundred houses with this intriguing feature. I’ve taken many photos, researched the patterns, and wondered how to get some pieces, which are not exactly sold at Home Depot. To stumble upon a piece, lying in the weeds for who knows how many years, felt so serendipitous. After all, I’d passed this house hundreds of times. The hole in the dirt was the result of a plumbing challenge, and was what led me to see this piece. I loved the back story.

Those who aren’t interested in architecture won’t understand how exciting this is to me. Those who want only new things won’t get it. But for those of us who love the surprises you discover in older houses, or at garage sales, or anywhere, when you’re least expecting it, this was a great day for me. I had a chat with a charming older man, and I got my first piece of cement block. In our yard I posed it among the blooming flowers, and took photos. I set a potted plant on it, incorporating it my potted plant garden, which is another one of my passions. I felt glad that I’d taken a chance, writing a note to a stranger. It’s taken me a long time to feel more comfortable asking for what I want, and it feels great when it ends the way you hope. Will this chunk of cement change my life? Probably not. But you live a good life if you can take joy in little things or moments that make you smile.