An A-Z of Wine--All Month!

During the month of April The New House Girl—which would be me—is taking a break from the comedic chronicles of Mr. Wonderful, our coo-coo cat and nosy neighbors to do something a little different. 

This month I’m writing blog posts about wine. Yep, an alphabet’s worth of blog posts starting with “A is for Drinking Alone” and running through our 26-letter alphabet all the way to “Z is for Zinfandel”.

Afterwards, the adventures of the New House Girl will resume here!

In the meantime, I hope you’ll join me on this wine tour. And remember: no whining, just winning!

Let the wine fun begin! CHEERS!

The Easter Bunny is Here!

“You should put your bunny away at night,” my neighbor said retrieving the newspaper from his driveway.

“We don’t have a bunny, Harold,” I said fetching the paper from my driveway.

“He was in your yard.”

“We don’t have a bunny.”

“He’s white.”

“We don’t have a bunny!”

“Yeah… right.”

Harold held plenty of opinions that I didn’t espouse most famous among them were that: grass was the best garden plant; guns were great at repelling squirrels and the prettiest woman’s outfit was a poodle skirt and saddle shoes. But this bunny business was different because it didn’t deal with opinions but cold, hard facts. Fact: I lived in my house and I’d never seen a bunny in the yard. Fact: Harold was 86 years old so maybe his brain was playing tricks on him? Or maybe he’d dreamt of the bunny in our yard? Or maybe Harold was just plain blind. I needed a second opinion.

“Have you seen a bunny in our yard?” I asked Mr. Wonderful as I laid the newspaper on the table. Mr. Wonderful shook his head while biting into his egg salad sandwich.

“Harold says we had one in our yard.”

“He also says we’re idiots for killing our grass,” he said.

“That’s his opinion.”

“In his mind, it’s a fact that we’re idiots.”

Mr. Wonderful had a point about Harold. I went outside to look at my plants for any bunny nibble damage.

“Happy Saturday!” our neighbor Charles said grinning and waving. “Hey, your bunny is cute.”

“Charles, we don’t have a bunny,” I said.

“He was in your yard last night.”

“We don’t have a bunny.”

“He’s white.”

“We don’t have a bunny!”

“Take it easy,” he said backing into his house fast.

First Harold, now Charles?! This bunny business was sweeping the neighborhood! It was epidemic like the plague, the flu or lactose intolerance. I marched to the corner to clear my head. Passing by Jerry’s garden I caught the scent of roses in the air. I paused to smell his crimson blooms.

“Your bunny is real cute,” Jerry said popping up behind a rose bush wearing his San Francisco 49ers baseball cap.

“We don’t have a bunny!”

“I saw him in your yard last night,”

“We don’t have a bunny!”
"But I saw him--"
"There isn't a bunny," I said marching off to the park and leaving Jerry speechless. This walk around the neighborhood would calm my nerves and help settle the score. All of my closest neighbors said they’d seen “our” bunny. Were they playing some big joke on me? I checked the date, it wasn’t April Fool’s Day, but still I felt like a fool that all of our neighbors had seen a bunny in our yard and I hadn’t.

After several laps around the park I returned home just as our yard was cast in afternoon shadow. When suddenly right in front of our house, nibbling on my baby nasturtiums, I saw it: The bunny! It was white and so cute. But it didn’t belong to us. It belonged to Harold, Charles, Jerry and everyone who saw it because it was… our Easter Bunny.

Happy Easter! Wishing you joyful beginnings at this splendid time of year!

What to %$*& Plant?

“The lawn is almost dead,” Mr. Wonderful said holding out his wine glass.

“Yep,” I said pouring wine.

“You have a plan for what happens next?”

“Yep.”

“You going to show me?”

“Nope.”

Mr. Wonderful and I had done so many things together—buying a house, adopting a cat, dealing with never satisfied mother-in-laws—but this planting thing, I needed to do on my own. While the lawn gasped its last breaths of photosynthesis, I was busy plotting the next adventure—its replacement!

In theory I knew what I wanted to plant. In theory I knew it would be beautiful. In theory I had a plan: Wherever the turf had been I would replant with something that was: 1) Drought tolerant 2) Low maintenance and 3) Inexpensive. In other words: the Impossible Dream.

But what would I plant exactly? With all the horticultural options available, I needed to get some specific ideas. I started close to home by looking at the plants growing in my neighbors’ gardens. Of course! If a plant grew well in their yard, it would grow well in mine, too!

“Hey, Harold!” I called out to my 86 year-old neighbor as he rolled his garbage bin to the street. He waved back as if he were giving me a lazy karate chop. I bounded over to him. “Harold, in your garden what’s your favorite plant?”

Without a hint of irony he said: “My grass.” I scanned the dry dirt patch he called a lawn. This Gobi Desert was his favorite thing? He adjusted his baseball cap and continued, “You should have seen it five years ago. It was green, lush—”

“You men, alive?” Harold continued waxing poetic about how his lawn used to look but I wasn’t into “used-to plants” I needed now plants. Besides, I’d been killing my turf for weeks, there was no way I was going to replace it with more turf!

As Harold rambled on about his lawn’s good ole days, I jumped in my car and headed to the ultimate plant idea factory—the nursery! The place was jam packed with seedlings in tiny containers and row after small potted row of annuals, perennials and semi-tropicals all watched over by millennial staff members with nose piercings and tattoos, like OMG. Every time I saw a new plant the ideas buzzed in my brain. I jotted down the plant’s needs, I drew plant sketches, I harassed the millennial clerk for the plant’s Genus and species—“It’s a plant, like, whatever”.  Like a starved honey bee I zipped from plant to plant gathering the nectar of ideas. Ideas! What joy! Then I tried to imagine these plants in my garden and I… blanked. Every affordable plant was too small and every big plant was too expensive. The Impossible Dream! Arghh!

Then I realized: It’s called a plant “nursery” not a “college”, “work station” or “corner office”. As lovely as all these plants were in their pretty little pots, I needed to see full-grown specimens to imagine them in my garden plan.

Back in my car I put the top down, cranked the music and took a road trip across Los Angeles. I drove to Beverly Hills, over the Hollywood Hills and through the Valley. I avoided the freeways and kept to residential streets where I had uninhibited views of adult flowers, mature shrubs and in the-prime-of-their-life trees. I gasped, I snapped photos, I was bowled over by the creative variety of Angeleno gardens. Oh, boy! Now I had ideas! Like this:

And this:

And this:

Armed with these photos I could show Mr. Wonderful my planting plans because a beautiful, drought tolerant garden was a Possible Dream.

Of course the %$*& garden wouldn’t be cheap but at least now it was possible!

Daruma and Books--March Read

Killing a lawn takes a long time. Lucky for me I had other things to keep me busy, like reading and complaining how long it takes to kill a lawn.

In March I read a couple books and kept my New Year's Resolution. Actually my New Year's Resolution was to read one book a month, so I'm ahead of the game--times three. Go me!

I started with Calvin Trillin's About Alice, which is a moving portrait about a man's love for his wife, written with humor and affection. Trillin has been a contributing writer to The New Yorker for, oh like 195 years, so he knows a plethora about writing, life and his dear wife Alice.

Here's the first line of the book:
"One condolence letter made me laugh."
What an opener--sad but funny! And his story delivered on both fronts--in spades. I'll be re-reading this book and discovering so many of his others for years to come.

Next I read Zen and the Art of Surfing by Greg Gutierrez. Call me crazy but oh, like 1,500 years ago, I don't think the monk, Daruma, had surfing in mind when he created Zen Buddhism. Although he should have. This collection of short stories treats those epiphany moments you have surfing, loving or just living. I'm not a surfer and this book did not make me want to learn how to surf instead it put me in the pipe of the wave and for the glorious moments of reading it I felt that I was a surfer already. That's good writing.

The last book I read this month was The Tin Horse by Janice Steinberg, a book I found at the Southern California Writer's Conference. The Tin Horse was inspired by a passage Steinberg read in the Raymond Chandler mystery, The Big Sleep:
"I shoved on back into the store, passed a partition and found a small dark woman reading a law book at a desk... She had the fine drawn face of an intelligent Jewess."

The Tin Horse fleshes out this Jewish woman by explaining how she came to be in Los Angeles circa 1941. This book is a rich, multi-generational character study about Boyle Heights, an Angeleno immigrant family and the tumultuous Jewish history of the 20th century. The writer has included Chandler's Phillip Marlowe--complete with tough guy talk, steaks and scotch--as well as a riveting mystery. The chapters about working in the film industry reveal that people have been trying to make it in this crazy place called Hollywood for, oh like a zillion years.

Which is still a shorter period of time than it takes to kill my lawn.

Wishing you all happy reading!

The Squirrel Villain

Batman had The Joker.

Superman had Lex Luthor.

And I had… The Squirrel.

In the world of comic books every great superhero had his villain. Not just any villain but a real bad guy who was his match in wits, strength and devilish plans. My life in California’s suburbs was imitating comic book art because I too had found the evil Yin to my heroic Yang and his name was… The Squirrel.

The Squirrel had thwarted me by eating apricots off my tree and decimating my internet connection with his fierce jaws. But he didn’t stop there.

In winter’s chill he scaled a palm tree and shredded the palm fronds causing them to rain down on my front walk like a biblical Egyptian plague or that weird scene in the film Magnolia with the falling frogs.

In summer’s heat he stole a massive steak tomato from my garden.

Now in spring I’d sprung a plan to be rid of The Squirrel forever. My plan had one step—it was so simple that it had to work! I removed all the fruit, vegetable and mineral elements from my front and back gardens and—as everyone knows—without food The Squirrel would move onto another garden to wreck havoc there.

Everyone on the planet knew this except Mr. Wonderful who spent Sunday outside chatting long distance to his college pal while eating walnuts. When he came across a walnut he didn’t like he tossed it on the patio where—Duh, duh—The Squirrel appeared, ate it and laughed.

“Squirrels can’t laugh,” Mr. Wonderful said.

“You don’t know The Squirrel,” I said chasing it out of our garden. “Now that you’re feeding it I’ll never conquer my villain.”

“Excuse me?” he said but I didn’t have time to explain.

This morning before breakfast I saw that The Squirrel was back. Seated in the same area of the patio waiting for a walnut handout from Mr. Wonderful. Typical. But I wasn’t the only one who saw the rodent. Jackson crept across the kitchen then slipping through the open sliding glass door he met The Squirrel head on. The Squirrel freaked! I saw the panic in his beady eyes! Jackson chased it to the property line and watched it race up the camellia tree and collapse on the fence

Have you ever seen a Squirrel have a heart attack? Today I did. And it was beautiful.

For 30 minutes Jackson crouched at the base of the camellia tree keeping watch. Once The Squirrel recovered from his massive coronary failure he crawled onto the roof and scampered away, all the while Jackson watched every step.

Jackson, my Jackson! How proud I was of him! Fighting The Squirrel was a fulltime job but finally I had help. Jackson the Cat was now my sidekick—my Robin, my Lois Lane, my hero.

Once a Killer...

As my mother used to say: "Once a killer, always a killer."
Or did Michael Connelly say that?

Ever since I began murdering my lawn, death had permeated my sunny California life. It started innocently enough: I was just a girl who desired to save water, the planet and my sanity by creating a drought-tolerant garden; so I suffocated my front yard's turf.  Murder struck again when I stomped out the life of a black widow spider (it was either her or me). Murder spread en masse when I over-watered my potted succulents before a rainstorm thereby wiping out generations of Hen and Chicks. It was horrible.

Although the last murder was a total accident (I swear), I had to admit that killing was getting easier. It was as if the 19th century's Wild West code of kill or be killed was alive and well in the 21st century's City of the Angels. However instead of packing a gun, I wrecked destruction with black plastic, a watering can and my fingers. It was horrible.

Then I noticed dozens of green blades shooting up all over my garden beds. I was thrilled to find something living in my death and destruction zone and felt that perhaps my murdering streak was over. Perhaps the horror was finally over.

On closer inspection I realized these green shoots were growing under our nine palm trees. I pulled on one and it separated from the rich garden soil with a balled seed at its base.

It was a palm tree seedling. Our huge Mexican Fan Palms were self seeding--everywhere! What good was killing my turf if it was being replaced by an army of palm seedlings that would grow in to 65 foot tall trees? Those fresh young blades were horrible and had to go!

Nope, my murdering spree was far from over, as John Paul Jones used to say, "I have not yet begun to fight!" 

Or did Minnie Mouse say that?

What to Do on St. Patrick's Day!

I love St. Patrick's Day: the green, the beer, the whiff of spring in the air!

If you need ideas on what to do in Los Angeles for this unofficial holiday, check out my Yahoo tips here!  T'anks!

Erin go Bragh!

Pizza Oven Pride--Photos!

After baking homemade pizzas in my pizza oven I've taken some pictures to illustrate the classic children's rhyming song:

Paddy cake, paddy cake, pizza-pie man.

Bake me a thin crust margarita 'za as fast as you can

Roll it,

Pad it with tomato and spinach toppings,

And mark it with cheese,

And put it in the oven for Mr. Wonderful and me!

   

Bon Appetit!

Pizza Oven Pizzaz

“We’re having homemade pizza tonight,” I announced to Mr. Wonderful as we slid into our respective cars.

“I can’t hear you,” he said behind the car window.

“WE’RE HAVING HOMEMADE PIZZA—”

He pointed to his ears, shrugged and drove off to work.

I didn’t resent him for doubting me. We’d been down this road before without any success. Okay, with complete and utter failure. But this time I was prepared!

The ceramic bricks were loaded in my oven; Check!

The pizza stone was delivered; Check!

The toppings were bought; Check!

The last thing was making the pizza dough.  Mama mia! This would be a snap!

I added the yeast, water and olive oil to the flour and kneaded it; back and forth on the floured countertop. I pounded it, slapped it, beat it. I made it suffer for the frustrations of my previous homemade pizza making. I kneaded that lump of dough so long my fingers wore down, the countertop evaporated and hell froze over. I let the dough rise, rolled it out and, covered it in toppings.  Just as I slid the ‘za into the 550 degree + oven, Mr. Wonderful walked in the front door.

“What’s that smell?” he said sniffing the air like a hungry cheetah.

“Homemade pizza,”

“It’s delicious,”

“I made the pizza.”

“I heard you,” he said smiling.

Pulled fresh from the pizza oven we devoured a whole pizza. Yes, I'd kneaded my frustrations away and yes, he started listening to me. It was a good day.

March in L.A.

Think you know Los Angeles? Here's a Pop Quiz to find out!

You can tell it's March in L.A. because:
1) The sun is shining.
2) There ISN'T a Hollywood awards show.
3) California poppies are blooming.

ANSWERS:
1) WRONG. The sun shines throughout the year, therefore it's not unique to March.
2) WRONG. The Humane Society hands out its Genesis Awards on March 23 to animal-oriented movies and TV shows.
3) CORRECT! California poppies are blooming. Or at least the one in my yard is!

Last winter I planted Eschscholzia californica from seeds purchased from the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants. This spring fringe-leafed poppy plants have sprouted en masse.

One of the highlights of Los Angeles is seeing entire fields and hillsides blanketed in these golden wildflowers. A great place to see them at their most impressive is at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. However due to minimal rainfall this winter, Antelope Valley's poppies will only reach full bloom in late April or early May.

Until then I'll enjoy the ones blooming in my yard!

Kitchen Love

“Do you need more cabinets here?” Mr. Wonderful said loitering in the kitchen.

“No,” I said unloading the dishwasher.

“Do you need more light?”

“No.”

“More space?”

“No.”

“Well I do.”

Mr. Wonderful was interested in my room? How odd.

During escrow for the House both of us had signed the bank’s papers in blood, sweat and multiple fears. Both of us had pledged that both of us would pay the mortgage every month for the next 380 years or both of us would be booted to the curb by David Beckham. But a funny thing happened on moving day—the House didn’t belong to both of us—it got divvied up between us. Mr. Wonderful claimed the office, work room, living room, spare bedroom and entire guesthouse while I got the run-down kitchen. Life was not fair.

In the first weeks of living in the House every night after dinner I would linger in the dingy kitchen while he retreated to the airy spare bedroom, the bright living room or went roller blading in the spacious guesthouse.

With disinfectant, buckets of paint and countless trips to The Home Depot I banished the kitchen’s offensive faded colors, grimy walls and dead lizard, thereby making my only room in the House my favorite room in the House.

I was smitten with kitchen love.

I was not alone. Mr. Wonderful knew a good thing when he saw it. It started small. Most indiscretions usually did. After several years of marriage the shine could rub off even the happiest of relationships and when that happened women and men acted out. Like every member of my fairer sex I coped by shopping. Meanwhile Mr. Wonderful took the path of all masculine brutes: he started spending time with… something else.  Which was oh, so far from wonderful.

While I was purchasing skirts, jeans and pants, he was playing with piecrust dough. While I was buying cowboy boots, he was canoodling with the Cuisinart. While I was buying knick knacks, he was buying gifts for her—for my creation, my best friend,  my kitchen! He started with extra drawers then graduated to massage oils for her wood counters. He took better care of her than his car.

He was smitten with kitchen love.

In the evenings I lingered in the kitchen and so did he. Seated on the opposite side of the table he scanned the internet for ideas to improve her, to make her more appealing, to make her more beautiful. He was so focused on this goal he no longer wanted to eat in, eat out or roller blade anywhere. Everything he did was now about her and for her. The happy conjugal life we’d shared was as present as last summer’s ice cream cone. I’d been warned fixing up a house while living in it put severe stressors on a marriage but I didn’t realize a single room could be total home wrecker. OMG Maybe my husband would leave me for… my kitchen. Was there a support group for that?  

Mad with kitchen love he drew up so many plans for her he released them in a multi-volume kitchen repair book series with corresponding iPhone app and Tumblr video site. 

“I’ll put in recessed lighting here,” he said showing me book seven of his 16-volume set.

“The kitchen doesn’t need it.”

“I’ll install more cabinets here.”

“I don’t need—”

“And more counter tops here and here.”

“No one needs this!” Couldn’t he see his indiscretions? His misplaced affection? “It’s all about her all day, every day, 24-7!” I said stamping my new cowboy-booted foot in frustration.

He kinked an eyebrow, “Who are you talking about?”

“The kitchen, you’re leaving me for my kitchen!” He asked me to elaborate about my fears and after I did, he pulled me close reassuring me that he was not in love with a space but his married, human partner, although she possessed an overactive imagination and gave human characteristics to inhuman places. We made up. Life was fair.

“All these kitchen improvements,” he said kindly, “I’m doing them for us.” My heart melted, my reason returned. 

“Can we improve the kitchen--together?”

A grin spread across his face. “I’d like that.”

In the end our kitchen love reminded us we were smitten with each other.

I sat beside him at the table where we both discussed the plans for our kitchen’s second remodel. We were on the same page again. Ahhh, life was wonderful.

The Writer's Conference in San Diego

This weekend I took a vacation from the writer's life and escaped to the Southern California Writer's Conference in San Diego, which is a total misnomer because I didn't see a thing of San Diego. The entire weekend I was holed up in a hotel with single-minded, wide-eyed, sleepless writers; none of whom minded my lack of business cards or loud laugh because they were too consumed talking about writers, rights and writing. It. Was. Heaven!

Some highlights included seeing my friend and mystery writer Gayle Carline. She likes to laugh so there's no mystery why I like her.

Hearing science fiction writer David Brin give an inspiring--and funny--keynote speech. News flash: Science fiction writers can be smart and funny. Double threat!

Hearing writer Greg Gutierrez talk about this short story collection Zen and the Art of Surfing while looking at his oil paintings. What a cool dude.

Buying books! After hearing Janice Steinberg speak of her process I'm looking forward to reading her novel The Tin Horse. It was inspired by Raymond Chandler's detective novel The Big Sleep with Philip Marlowe, which is an excellent pedigree for fiction. I also met Mary Vensel White, author of The Qualities of Wood.  If her book is half a good as she is nice it's going to be a thrill to read. I can't wait to crack it open!

 Meeting new friends--sweet children's book author Sheri Fink;

And gregarious writer Kimberly Robeson.

The final highlight; hanging with old friends Dale and Gayle Carline.

It was a dynamic, mind-opening, glorious weekend! It was so stimulating to be among all those writers I felt like I could write a book, screenplay and a 14 volume poetry collection in iambic pentameter--all before lunch.  

However in its aftermath, the hardest part is sitting alone--again--and writing--again. I know, I know, this is the writer's life I signed up for. I look at the blinking cursor on my white computer screen. Despite my best efforts, the screen remains blank.

So... when's the next writer's conference? 

Driving to San Diego

I'm driving to San Diego to attend the Southern California Writer's Conference and to see friends. Even in the slow lane I don't mind the drive.

'Cause the sun is shining!

Happy Valentine's Day!

To all you romantics out there who love an unrequited someone, love a Significant Other or just love Love, here's wishing you a very Happy Valentine's Day!  

And to all you heartless, non-romantics out there, I say just wait, because when you least expect finding love, it'll jolt you like a quadruple espresso, hit you like a ton of bricks, turn your world topsy turvy like a washing machine, make you--

You get my point.  So enjoy your heart before you give it away freely to someone you love.

My Pizza Oven

“How about homemade pizza for dinner?” I said to Mr. Wonderful during a sunny breakfast.

“Where?” he said spreading Nutella on his toast.

“In our home. I'm making the homemade pizza.”

“… ambitious.”

His mouth said “ambitious” but his look said “you're certifiably crazy”. I’d show him! Little did he know that my middle name was Mozzarella and I had a plan. It entailed making the pizza dough by hand and baking it in our open-hearth kitchen fireplace, aka my Magic Pizza Oven.

Before noon I started with the most important part: miming how to throw rounds of pizza dough in the air.  Uno, due, tre Toss! Mama mia! I got good at miming how to toss pizzas, mind you not really tossing pizzas just pretending to toss them. Sufficiently skilled at this, I moved on to the heat of the matter.

The kitchen fireplace had a gas starter, which meant it would be easy to build the fire. Plus we still had ½ a cord of wood in the woodpile to feed the pizza baking flames. Mama mia! I was ready to go!

With the sun high in the sky I looked at my recipe’s cooking instructions. For best results it stated I needed to get the heat of my pizza oven anywhere from 600 to 800 degrees F. I double-checked the numbers. Yep, the thing had to be hot enough to solder metal, melt magnesium or destroy the Death Star. But how was I going to get a wood-burning fireplace, without a door—in my kitchen?!—up to those hellish temperatures without melting my face off?!

After lunch I re-evaluated my pizza plan and gazed at my Electrolux gas oven. My beloved, gorgeous gas range + oven; of course! Why build a pizza oven when I already had an oven? I danced across the room to the oven’s control panel, which stated it could bake up to 550 degrees but no higher. Pizza maldita! My homemade pizza making was doomed. As I cursed in Italiano and beat my chest in anguish I remembered an article in the LA Times newspaper about using your home oven to mimic a pizza oven.

I retrieved the clipped recipe and discovered that you could convert your oven to a pizza oven by adding heat absorbing bricks that would increase the temperatures anywhere from 600 to 800 degrees F. Magnifico!

I jumped in my car and raced to Hollywood’s brickyard to buy said bricks. I purchased eight unglazed clay bricks (six split, two straight) then back in my car, with the sun shining and the top down, I felt like a superhero that had saved the day’s plan of homemade pizza for dinner. Bravo me! Dramatically I inched home in rush hour traffic.

The last item I needed for a complete home oven conversion to restaurant pizza oven was a pizza stone to bake the pie on. A pizza stone, especially designed to bake the crust from the center of the pie out, was crucial to good tasting pizza. I stopped at several stores but struck out in the stone department. Dios mio!

As the moon rose over the horizon I got online and ordered a pizza stone.  I got the fastest shipping possible but would still have to wait over 24 hours for my supplies to arrive. In addition I had to find something else to eat tonight. When Mr. Wonderful came home I greeted him with cold egg salad sandwiches.

“What happened to homemade pizza for dinner?”

“I was too—

“... ambitious?”

I hate it when he’s right. But next week, we’ll have homemade pizza for dinner! Mama mia!

Book--February Read

When you're waiting for your lawn to die there's a plethora of things to do, like going out to eat, seeing a movie or reading a book.

This weekend I did all three. The bonus was some of these were New Year's Resolutions of mine. It's February and I still remember I made resolutions! Yippee!

Mr. Wonderful and I spent the morning together (which was one of my resolutions--Yippee!). We went out for brunch at TART Restaurant at the Farmer's Daughter Hotel. It's not only odd to see blond oak furniture and red checkered napkins in glam Hollywood but it's refreshingly welcome.  And my salad was delicious.

Mr. Wonderful and I saw Steven Soderbergh's new film Side Effects (this was not a resolution, but should have been. I have NO problem seeing movies during the year. In 2014 I could make watching movies one of my resolutions. Hmmm... food for thought). What a thrilling, puzzle of a film Side Effects was. Steven Soderbergh has been saying for some time now that he wants to retire. But I, for one, hope he doesn't until he's made 200 more films like this. I don't want to give anything away about his latest effort, a well made whodunit, except this: If you love Alfred Hitchcock films, you'll enjoy Side Effects. Don't read about the film, just go see it!

This weekend the sun and clouds have been fighting it out with moments or brilliant sunshine or precipitation-heavy, ashen clouds. The indecisive weather made it the perfect day to read a book for the second month of the year (and keep another New Year's Resolution--Yippee!). In January I read Little Bee, in February I read The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.

The book begins strong and carries that energy all the way through. The opening lines are:

"When I was fifteen, I got hepatitis. It started in the fall and lasted until spring." 

Wow. What a simple way to start a complex story about a young man who falls in love with an older woman but learns about her past deeds and then questions himself and his love for her. The Reader won numerous awards and was even selected for Oprah's Book of the Month Club. I see why. If you love a compelling story, have ever questioned if you really knew someone or if you enjoy reading sexy books, do yourself a favor and read The Reader!

After that then you can see Side Effects!

Cat's Upside Down

It's Friday and from Jackson's viewpoint, it's looking up--and upside down.

This cat sleeps more than King Tut. So I feel pretty lucky I got a photo of him with his eyes open in the 3.5 seconds that he was awake today.

THAT'S the excitement of his Friday. I hope we ALL have more fun than him!

Happy Friday!

Super Bowl Sunday

It's Sunday and the Super Bowl, which means no homework, housework or yard work.

SCORE!

Go San Francisco!

Flower Power--Camellias

With winter warming into spring I needed to forget the black plastic covering my front yard, so I went someplace else to find beauty. Namely, my back yard.

Currently our evergreen Camellia japonica plant is blooming and not just a flower here or there but explosions of blooms like a Bicentennial fireworks display on the Fourth of July.  Our camellia is the “Debutante” variety whose pink flower resembles the shape and petal display of a peony. Camellias are called the “rose of winter” because in mild southern climates--like the beach, the desert or my back yard--they bloom from October to February.  Ours has been pumping out pink blooms since before Halloween.

Originally camellias came from eastern and southern China where they have been cultivated for thousands of years and are recognized as the flower of the Chinese New Year--and fireworks. Ah-ha! There's a theme here! I've read that in Chinese culture the white camellia represents loveliness and the red camellia represents wealth. I have a pink camellia, which I guess means it’s sort of okay to look at and smack dab in the middle class.

Doing some research in the Sunset Western Garden Book I discovered that the Camellia japonica growing in my backyard is a Japanese species that was found in the Philippines in the 17^th century and came to the U.S. in the early 20^th century. The "Debutante" variety was developed by Gustav Gerbing's Nursery on Amelia Island, Florida. His friends called him "Gus".

The woman who built our house was coo-coo for camellias and planted several varieties including this Debutante. At 10 feet tall the Debutante is by far the tallest, oldest and most beautiful of the camellias we have.

Looking at it makes me forget... uh... whatever it was I wanted to forget.

Pictures of the Turf being… Murdered

Here are the photographic steps of the black plastic method I used to kill my turf:

Step 1) Mow the turf short. Grass grows from its tips so if it's short, it—and its roots—will die faster. Remember this turf murder is about effectively killing the turf’s roots so they won’t grow back, which will leave plenty of room for the gorgeous, drought tolerant plants that will be planted. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Step 2) Buy the biggest, thickest sheet of black plastic available. At The Home Depot I found one that was 10 feet x 25 feet and bought two rolls of it. The color is important because black will A) Prevent any sunlight from getting to the roots while simultaneously B) Warming in the sun’s heat, which will slowly burn the roots to death. Hey, murder is never pretty. 

Step 3) Lay the black plastic on the grass and pin it down with heavy things like bricks, wood or your heart, because having the entire front yard covered in plastic is a happiness killer to any homeowner.

And now the very hardest step:

Step 4) Wait. For six weeks.

ARRGH!

Murdering... the Turf

Waking up to the sun shining, a mockingbird singing and children playing I said, “Today I’ll commit murder.”  Murder… my Turf, that is.

I had to kill my grass to save my soul. Or at least my water bills and/or sanity, whichever I had more of. (Answer: water bills.) My first step was finding a murder plan, so I grabbed an Agatha Christie mystery and began reading. With all the dozens of murders Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and Luke Fitzwilliam had solved, none of them detailed killing grass. I needed to speak to a professional turf murderer.

“Harold, I need help,” I said waving to my 86 year-old neighbor as he stood in his front yard. He swatted the air with a flick of his wrist while watching the lawn sprinklers douse the barren dirt patch in front of his house. His yard was so defunct it looked like a bomb had been dropped on it eighty-four times. “Wow,” I said with admiration. “Your lawn is super dead.”

“I didn’t kill it intentionally.”

“But when you don’t set out to kill something, you really kill it.”

“Since I washed my car, nothing will grow here,” he said kicking the dirt.

If I killed my lawn the same way he’d killed his, I wouldn’t be able to grow so much as a weed ever again. I took one step back, then another.

“You want my help killing your grass?” he asked.

“I can’t hear you—” I said sprinting to my front door and slamming it behind me.

Inside I raced to the internet. I found sites full of information on killing the lawn with a silver bullet. The method was so quick it took just 24 hours. What a difference one day could make! I read on—the silver bullet used chemicals. But then… weren’t these quick chemical options just like Harold’s murder method of car washing? This wasn’t a rhetorical question. It was the truth. And I answered it truthfully: Moving on!

I opened a new search window and googled “organic methods + killing grass”. Apparently vinegar was a popular method embraced by fellow turf killers but it entailed buying whole glasses, bottles and vats of vinegar to kill the grass. Full Disclosure: yes, I wanted to murder my grass but if I were going to buy vats of anything it would be water, whiskey or wine. Moving on!

I sought out wholesome organic methods of “taking care of the grass”, which is an Italian mob euphemism for “whacking the turf” and found one called “Lasagna”.  This method's recipe had my mouth watering: Lay six (6) layers of cardboard and/or newspapers on the grass then atop that, pile six (6) inches of organic mulch. Let it cook in the sun for two (2) months then with a shovel dig through the mulch and paper mess and plant your drought tolerant plants directly in the muck. Serves 1 hernia to the idiot doing this by herself.

Several things bothered me about this: 1) Where would I get enough cardboard to create six layers (?!) to cover my whole yard? 2) Who would do the back-breaking work of piling on the six inches of mulch to cover the entire lawn? (Answer: moi). And 3) A cooking time of two months?! Yes, I was lacking sanity but I wasn’t crazy! Moving on!

Approaching my wit’s end, which actually was a short journey considering how few wits I possessed to have even embarked on this Quixotic murder endeavor in the first place, I found a last option: Plastic. This method entailed mowing the grass short, covering the lawn in large sheets of black plastic and pinning the plastic sheet down with bricks, boards or the lawn mower since I wouldn’t be needing that thing ever again. Denied sunlight by the opaque black plastic for six weeks, the grass would wither and die. 

Ahhh, yes. Murdering with plastic, how shrewd, inexpensive and effortless. Or as Agatha Christie said Murder is Easy. And the Queen of Murder would know.

Next: Pictures of the Turf being... Murdered

Farmers Market--Photos

One of the highlights of the week is going to the Farmers Market. We like the Burbank Farmers Market (on Saturdays) and the Farmers Market in Sherman Oaks next to Macy's (on Tuesday evenings). But we linger at the the one in Studio City because it's held Sunday mornings, which gives us time to stop and taste the strawberries...

Smell the corn...

And squeeze the potatoes. 

And as everyone knows, squeezing the potatoes is very important.

The handsome produce, the friendly vendors, the sunshine; going to the Farmers Market is so relaxing. Plus shopping at the market is good for the senses, the farmers and us.

The only down side is I bought so much produce this week I'll have to work 27-7 for the next six months preparing it all.

Maybe Farmers Markets aren't relaxing. But they do taste good!

Sharing Grass

I’ve never done things the way others do.

I didn’t get a college degree; I got two.

I didn’t date a bunch of losers; I married one great guy.

I didn’t want green grass; but had the lushest, greenest yard in all of Southern California.

Ahh! Life's cruel ironies.

I’d already made the big decision to delete the lawn plus I’d been approved to rip it out but when it came to the logistics of actually removing the emerald green sod I… just… couldn’t… do… it.

The reason? I felt terrible tossing out a living plant—albeit one whose weekly water needs sucked the Mississippi River bone-dry and required a mowing, weeding and fertilizing regimen that was more complicated and time-consuming than a bride preparing for her big destination-wedding day. Nope, when guilt struck me, it hit hard wiping out all the painful months I had suffered maintaining the %#*$ grass and replacing rational thought with sentiments like: 

I can't rip out the turf.  It's not fair to the turf.  The turf was here first.

I was like the woman who was sick and uncomfortable throughout her entire pregnancy, but the moment her baby was born--Whoosh!--she forgot about the previous nine months of agony and got pregnant... again.

My guilt about removing the turf taught me a vital lesson about myself, I had a mothering instinct... for plants.

Clearly, I’ve never done things the way other people do.

Yes I was a plant lover and as horticulturalists know the greatest defining characteristic of plant lovers was, we never threw out plants. No, sir-ee, we shared them! 

In our neighborhood finding someone who needed green grass was as easy as giving away candy bars on Halloween. I looked at my neighbor's brown lawn and sashayed over to Harold and Norma’s house where I found Norman hoisting his American flag. Of course, they'd take my grass because nothing was more American than green grass! Except maybe baseball, oh, and football. Football was American and so was apple pie, hamburgers—and despite the name—“French Fries”, Girl Scout Cookies, yellow ribbons, oak trees, jazz, disco, grunge, crab cakes, the Constitution, throwing horseshoes, s’mores, fire pits, fireworks—okay, okay! So clearly plenty of things were American and food related. But lush green grass was on that "very American" list, too.

“Harold, do you want our grass?”

“Sure I’ll take it,” he said looking at our yard with envy.

“Great!—”

“If you pick it up and plant it over here.”

Now I was a plant lover but not a fool. Doubling my work by ripping out my lawn and fixing up his was not in my grand plan of sharing grass.

"If you want it," I said. You can come get it. Deal?"

Harold laughed and entered his man-cave garage.

I telescoped the area and spotted another neighbor working in his garden.

"Hi Jerry," I said bounding over to him.  Jerry was a San Francisco sports fan, a rose fan and a true plant lover. He had dozens of beautiful roses in his front yard. Of course Jerry would want my grass!

“I hear you’re making some changes to your yard,” Jerry said snipping off a stalk from a rosebush.

“We’re getting rid of the turf.”

"But your grass is real nice," he said tossing a look to our yard.

“Do you want it?"

He shook his head. "But if you're getting rid of any roses, I’ll take those."

Correction: Jerry wasn't a plant lover but a rose hog. 

Maybe I could call a local library.  Donate the grass to them.  Or a—wait a minute.  What was I doing? If I wanted to get rid of the grass in my yard to improve my quality of life and decrease water bills it didn't make sense to pass the grass along to someone else because that meant the total number of yards with grass in L.A. would remain the same.

If I wanted to enact change, I didn't need to share grass but my vision of a water wise garden and push my yard from turfed to turf-free.  Without my neighbors or a charity taking my grass the only option I had was to kill my grass... myself. 

Nope, I’ve never done things the way others do.

Next: Murdering... the Turf

Hollywood Signs

This week I was out and about in Hollywood and from the signs I saw, Angelenos are still funny.

New Yorkers may be tough, Chicagoans friendly, but Angelenos, we have a sense of humor.