Thematic Photographic - Distant

Every week Carmi at Written, Inc. poses a theme for photographic inspiration. This week's theme is DISTANT.

Oh, wait. Can we get rid of that horrible green hallway? I'm getting nightmares! Here is a distant view of Santa Monica Bay, from up on the East Topanga Fire Road. You can see the Santa Monica Pier stretching out into the ocean.

Thematic Photographic - Distant

Every week Carmi at Written, Inc. poses a theme for photographic inspiration. This week's theme is DISTANT.

After a transcontinental flight, you finally check in to your hotel. It's late; you're jet-lagged. Home is far away. The lobby is quiet, the coffee shop closed. Somewhere the sound of a vacuum cleaner drones. The night clerk is polite, but you're too tired to do more than smile.

You take the elevator up to your floor, and step out into the hallway. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you're running and can't reach your destination? Suddenly the door to your room seems impossibly distant.

July in the garden

The heat of summer is starting to build, and L.A. has asked us all to conserve water. So I expect to see the garden's lushness subside as we tidy plants, cut back spent blooms, and hunker down until autumn when the weather cools.

But right now, the roses are giving their all. This English rose is in a pot on my deck.

Patterned and colorful leaves are as pretty as flowers. An ornamental grapevine climbs over the shade structure. Its leaves are like stained glass as the sun glows through them.

This elegant clerondendrum flower is as blue as the July sky. Its petals look like butterfly wings.

The agapanthus and lavender are in full bloom on the hillside beneath the lemon tree. So let's enjoy it now, before the heat comes.

Vertical music

Modern designers Charles and Ray Eames were more than just designers. I'm not sure what word to use that really describes what they did. They played with things. They took cool pictures of things and put together slides shows to share with people. They collected objects that pleased them. They made toys for kids. They played with toy trains. Their house, constructed with off-the-shelf steel components, had ladders that hooked to the ceiling beams so that you could hang something from the ceiling when the fancy struck them. They even let their grandkids swing on ropes hung from the ceiling, and knock down stacks of cardboard boxes for fun.

When we visited the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, the docent who led the tour drew our attention to something on the studio wall. I thought maybe it was a train-track for a toy train, like the ones they'd made a film about - but mounted so it ran straight up the wall.

It's a vertical xylophone.

Keys taken from childrens' toy xylophones - the metal painted in bright colors - rest in notches made in two wooden boards attached to the wall.

A marble dropped from the top rebounds against the keys as it falls, sounding the notes.

Tunes are made by arranging the keys in whatever order you please, or by slipping carboard spacers in to mute keys you don't want to sound.

There are an infinite number of tunes possible. A single marble, handfuls of marbles, a bucketful of marble.

I can't tell you how happy this made me. Think of children, dropping pebbles down a chute. I wish I could play with it myself, forever.

Borrowed Fireworks

For the last several years, we've spent the Fourth of July at friends' house, where the party includes the most incredible fireworks show any host has arranged for for his guests.

Jill and Sparky live high on a hill on the landward side of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. From their hilltop, you can see the Southern California Coastline from Point Dume to Palo Verdes Peninsula.

To reach the house, you drive up a road that winds past palatial mansions, with a view of the sea.

Finally, you leave the mansions behind, and the road turns to dirt, and you find yourself so high you're even above the County water tank.

Over time, our friends Sparky and Jill have created a garden paradise atop this hill, behind bright golden walls. They make the property available as a location for filming or for special events. You couldn't go wrong with a view like theirs.

Flagstone paths and terraces surround a sunken lawn perfect for gatherings. We gathered by an outdoor fireplace to keep warm and talk.

The house is small and nothing special; a white wooden cottage surrounded by a rickety wooden deck. Through the house and out toward the hill is another garden, a dry garden.


Here, a blooming palo verde tree is surrounded by pelargoniums, succulents, and other drought-tolerant plants. Jill is a fantastic gardener, and in only a few short years, she has developed this place into a beautiful retreat.

Here you can stand on the paved terrace and look at the sun set on the Pacific Ocean. The hill seems to drop away beneath your feet, and it's here that we carried our chairs around nine o'clock on the Fourth.

This is the view directly ahead of us, but to the south, you can see every small community fireworks display. As we sit on the hill, we scan the curve of the coast. It's like seeing winking jewels on a curved string of beads. That starburst there is from the fireworks in Pacific Palisades, at the high school stadium. That twinkle beyond is Marina del Rey, Redondo, or Manhattan Beach. Is that small crimson asterisk all the way down at San Pedro? Or is it the Palo Verde Peninsula? Closer to us, there are fireworks somewhere off Malibu Colony.

But the best is last - right in front of us. Out on the water, a tug nudges a barge into position. And right before us, the show starts.

We don't know whose fireworks show this is. All we know is the City of Malibu has issued a permit for it. We speculate which movie star has provided us with this treat. Danny Devito, some say. Jennifer Aniston, say others. We really don't know, but we're grateful for the patriotic gift.

My little camera actually takes pretty good video - better than stills in a dark setting. Here's a bit of video I took as we sat in our lawn chairs, sipping wine and watching our Borrowed Fireworks. You can tell we're having fun.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Jilly and Sparky's place is available as a location for special events - their website is here at Rancho del Cielo.

Pink Saturday - what a plum

Pink Saturday - Beverly, at the blog "How Sweet the Sound" hosts Pink Saturday. Let the color pink inspire you!

When we bought our property, there were mature fruit trees on it. We have two lemon trees, an apricot tree, and a plum tree. There was also an orange tree, but it wasn't doing well, and it was removed in a garden remodel.

The plum tree is a red, Santa Rosa type plum, not an Italian prune type plum. It bears round fruit that start green and blush first golden, then pink, then red and finally deep violet. The skin shows a beautiful frosty bloom.

The fruits are plump, usually with a pronounced crease, for all the world like a shapely tender bottom.

The flesh is golden, tinged with red close to the stone. They aren't free-stone plums - where the stone come cleanly away from the flesh. You have to bite through the juicy pulp right down to the stone.

The birds and animals here love the plums, and usually steal or spoil them before they ripen enough to pick. But each year we get a few to make tarts or preserves.

The quantity varies from year to year - it seems that every abundant year is followed by a sparse year. Last year, there were so many plums the branches bent heavily to the ground.

I harvested them and made spiced plum and red onion pickles - delicious as a condiment with pork or roast fowl. We just recently finished the last of last summers' jars.

But this year, our crop is small. I'm not sure what to do with them. Perhaps this weekend I should make a new batch of pickles, or some jam.

Or instead, maybe I should make a tart, or a rustic crostata, like this one pictured here from last year - we ate it up while it was still warm.

What would you do, with this delicious midsummer bounty?

Have a happy and safe July 4th, everyone!

New haircut

In preparation for our trip to Paris, I thought I'd better pay more attention to my appearance - my last haircut was in March, and I'd let too much time pass. So yesterday I went to Julianna and got a cut and highlights.

What do you think?


I like a hairstyle that's easy to take care of, because I'm no good at styling my own hair. Or anyone's hair, probably - not having any girl-children means I never had the opportunity to try.

Julianna's a good stylist, and she tries to teach me basic techniques so I can blowdry my hair at home. So I watch, carefully, as she twirls the round brush under the blast of the hot dryer, shaping the smoothly turned-under sides and lifting volume at the crown.

I always ask what product she uses, and sometimes even buy it from her, though I never actually use it.

And the blow-dry lessons? Well this morning I gave it a try.

My hair is less than two inches long. How can it be possible to tangle the round brush so badly I can't get it out?

Thematic Photographic - Aviation

Every week Carmi at Written, Inc. poses a theme for photographic inspiration. This week's theme is AVIATION.

A small airport in the big city. And a hidden secret getaway.

Here at the Santa Monica airport, you can sit on a restaurant balcony, sip a cool drink, and watch the planes take off and land.

There's something about the vast open space and the wide sky that makes it feel like you're a million miles away, right in the middle of the city.

Chill

Day-to-day life can sometimes be frustrating. Sometimes it's good to just chill out.