Aebleskiver

Bless you, you lovely little balls of dough.

Rocketshipless

The kid, checking out the other attractions in Rocket Ship Park. We both preferred the rocket ship.

Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook

Design by Safdie Rabines Architects, and well worth a visit.

Field Notes

This humble notepad has an extensive devotional following on flickr. The kid (mine, pictured) has piles of notepads of every size, but using a parent's is always preferred.

Compost Lesson #8

There's no such thing as away.

Soon to Be Roasted

Cooper's Hawk?

The 30 or so sparrows usually flitting around our backyard were under cover in an instant when this hawk arrived. If anyone can help with a positive ID, I'd be most appreciative.

Other

No Title

Mockingbirds (Northern)

They like tomatoes.

Rocketship Park

Greenwashing

I made the mistake of reading the side of a milk carton this morning, and it annoyed me enough that I picked up the phone. Is there any connection between a stock image of a young seedling in a model's palm, and the milk my child drinks? I called Horizon Organic today and told them I thought it was less than honest to state "choosing organic leaves the world just a little better than how we found it." If they were indeed leaving the world a little better than they found it, you'd think they'd allow customers to visit their facilities. When I asked if I could see where the milk we buy comes from their helpful customer service associate replied, firmly, no.

Instax

I have a Fuji Instax 200 on loan and am savoring the joys of instant, undigital photography. This installation—HappyHappy by Choi Jeong-Hwa—of plastic toys and containers from a $.99 store is currently at the BCAM plaza, between LACMA and BCAM.

Tools

I lost this knife about 20 years ago; found it recently. I have more useful knives, but this one's prettiest, hands down. I thought I'd photograph it before it goes missing for another 20 years.

Climbing

Compost Lesson #7

The optimal temperature of a backyard compost pile is between 135 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit. But don't bother buying a thermometer. Decomposition only goes in one direction. Let it.

Julius Shulman: 1910–2009

No picture with this post, in honor of Mr. Shulman whom, we thought, would never die. I like to think a lot of significant Southern California structures exist, in a way, only because Julius Shulman's photos gave them life. Whether one visited any of the buildings Shulman immortalized on film or not, the vision he put forth was much greater than what any of us would come away with visiting the same scene.

I've stared at his images, long and hard, trying to absorb just a touch of his way of seeing.

This past year I had the good fortune to hear him speak at UCLA. He didn't answer a single question put to him, though he did speak at length. No one held it against him.

Compost Lesson #6

Smith & Hawken is going out of business, after 30 years. You might still be able to find one of these bins in an S&H store, but they're no longer taking online orders. I've had this one for about 10 years; it's not pretty but it does what it needs to: enclose compost, let it breathe, keep it hot. If you can find one on sale, it's a worthwhile buy.

Compost Lesson #5

Borrow some leaves from your neighbor.

Compost Lesson #4

"With us the wastes that escape use typically become pollutants. This kind of use turns an asset into a liability."
—Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

"Celebrate Your Country's Independence

by blowing up a small portion of it.
Thank you, come again."
-- A. N.

This Isn't Apropos

of anything that comes to mind at the moment, but it's how things look to me, sometimes.

One For the Mishpucha

Charles Jones, Not

It's not Charles Jones. It is a 10-foot-plus Russian mammoth sunflower we grew from last year's seed, which is a first here.

Compost Lesson #3

You'd think your composting would produce enough to replenish your garden soil. But in reality compost cooks down more than Swiss chard, and if you want enough to spread around even a small garden, you'll have to seek it elsewhere. Equestrian centers or rhyming craptonite couriers are your two best bets for buying large quantities of compost for cheap.

Scored!

The Next Whole Earth Catalog, 1981, purchased at Goodwill last weekend for $2.99. Available on eBay starting at about $30. Hours of delicious browsing, reading, ogling.
One highlight: editor Stewart Brand quoting life lessons from Buckminster Fuller: "Go only where invited; don't show unfinished work; reflect the physical world's honesty and all will go well."

Nominative Determinism

There's a small state park just south of Lucia, CA, which is just south of Big Sur, that has one of the most magnificent redwood forests I've seen. Nothing as big or out-of-the-way as the landscape Richard Preston describes in his enjoyable The Wild Trees, but still quite wonderful.

The redwood in this photo, and its skirt of descendants, siblings or maybe cousins, lives a 15-minute bike ride from Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, worlds away—at least—from Big Sur. It's in a canyon where spotting a hiking celebrity is more likely than discovering a redwood tree. Which makes stumbling upon a tree like this that much more enjoyable.

As for the title of this post, my first name, Elon, means "tree" in Hebrew.

Compost Lesson #2

Corn husks break down slowly. There's no hurry.

Compost Lesson #1

[This is the first installment of what will be an ongoing, irregular series here.]
I wanted to post this photo as a counterpoint to the image in the previous post. I enjoy beauty as much as anyone—and sweets, of course—but I also enjoy compost and bugs.
The sectioned larvae pictured here will grow up to become soldier flies. They're quite welcome in my compost bin for two reasons: they assist with decomposition (precisely our purpose for having a bin) and they attract phoebes.
Phoebes will sit on a low perch near our compost bin and swoop down to snatch up emerging soldier flies. Phoebes are charming.

The Dessert Architect

I did the photography for a book called the Dessert Architect, by Robert Wemischner, and according to Amazon, it's available for preorder, though not yet released. We finished shooting the photos about a year and a half ago, and I'm looking forward to seeing the book soon. Finally. I hope.
The food stylist who used matter-manipulating sorcery to make our subject matter camera-ready is Andy Sheen-Turner. We did, indeed, get to taste the desserts before, after and during shooting, and they were all, without exception, supremely delicious.

2009 L.A. Marathon

Hats off, dude.

COOL TOOLS

If you didn't arrive here from Cool Tools, have you been there yet? In addition to heading back to the classroom to pursue some longstanding educational goals, I'm editing Cool Tools now. (Still doing the photo thing, too, of course. Always the photo thing.) And I'm pretty excited about that because I've been reading the site for the past two years, and many of the purchases I've made during that time have come from Cool Tools suggestions. Please visit, subscribe, submit. Just one more link.
See you there.
Thank you.

Old Time Stuff

The Old Time Social of the previous post got me thinking about old stuff, and how old isn't necessarily good—we can thank modernity for Twitter, right?—but it often is. This little decaf bottle has been holding a small collection of 1922 silver dollars and 1964 half dollars since before I was around. Shoot, since before "caffein" had an "E" at the end. It had been my father's, and has been mine for a long while. I check the eBay values of these coins from time to time, but mostly just out of curiousity.

Third Time Ever Old Time Social, Los Angeles

Square dancing, cake walking, fiddling, banjoing, calling, promenading, swinging, BBQ eating and general family friendly good time having—once again at the Old Time Social, under the Spring Street bridge at Farmlab. I wish it happened more than once a year. Here's the Kid, doing a better job of it than I did.

Squirrel Gardeners

I'm not sure where the Picfair Village squirrels are getting raw peanuts in the shell, but as I've been planting our summer vegetables, I've been digging up lots of peanuts. Yesterday morning when I went out to the garden I noticed this new seedling. Digging carefully to the root, I realized it's a peanut plant. So, we're growing peanuts now.

Blogs Don't Update Themselves

The Kid at the new Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. Well worth a visit. Driving up the hill, we saw the largest snake I've ever seen not in a cage or around a person's neck.

Santa Ana Winds

To have an association/feeling/opinion/superstition regarding the Santa Ana winds is to be a Southern Californian.

Wondering

if a party is vegetarian friendly? Check the decor.

And Finally

One more exterior view of the same project (see below).

Music Building Interior Abstraction

Osborn Architects

Music Building

This is a music building, designed by Osborn Architects, on a high school campus in L.A. County. My high school looked, and felt, like a prison, and I don't know whether or not there was a separate music building, but there were exceedingly long ugly hallways throughout. The acoustics in this building here are amazing, and though the photos won't relay that, I'll post some interior shots here soon.

Flats

After I stopped cursing my third flat in the past week—and I've barely been riding—I realized it had been awhile since my last bicycle-themed blog post. So, here's what it looked like when I found the microscopic hole in my tube. For those of you who haven't shared in this fun experience, you remove the tube from the tire, reinflate the tube, and then submerge it in water. The bubbles help you locate the hole, which you patch with a stinky toxic glue and, well, a patch.

A Lot of Windows to Wash

On these Century City landmarks. Speaking of CC landmarks, check this.

I've Been Tired

Salvaged Kale

This bunch of kale took part in yesterday morning's pre-heatwave garden exodus. We didn't get a chance to harvest our red leaf lettuce before the record hot day. Though we've watered our lettuce almost daily lately, the thin lettuce leaves actually burned and dried up by midday. I guess we'll have lettuce again in November.

Crimson Sweet

Watermelon.

Heatwave Harvest

It was 92 degrees in L.A. yesterday, and it's supposed to be a couple of degrees hotter today. Leafy greens like this kind of heat less than I do—which is not at all. So I pulled most of the chard, kale, lettuce and arugula from the garden this morning, and it's all chilling safely in the fridge.

Expectations Exceeded

I want to live here.

Hannah Carter Japanese Garden

The kid and I are about to head there for our first visit in a year. As it's been a good spring for growing things, I think we're in for a good day.

Happy Monday

Golden Chard Update

These plants have been providing us a lot of leafy greens this year.

Side Shoots

This lovely specimen from our garden was just steamed and quickly eaten by the entire family (the kid, now three, loves her veggies) before it could make its way to the dinner table. We're still new to the broccoli game, but understood that after the main head is harvested, the side shoots will provide more, if smaller, harvests for a while longer, before the plant has run its course. This side shoot was noteworthy not just for its deliciousness, but because when we sliced it off of the plant an hour ago, it was nearly six inches across, slightly larger than the main head that we enjoyed in January.