Greetings from Buenos Aires!

I've long wanted to come to Buenos Aires, one of the great late nineteenth and early twentieth century cities of the world ... it was a long journey, but made bearable by the fact that there's only a 4 hour time difference from LA.  And made super-bearable by the fact that it's autumn: a clear crisp autumn day, with golden trees.  I'm staying in Palermo, an area of the city that feels a bit like a Turin suburb,

though of course the French influence is very strong - not least in this abandoned Boulangerie,

and in the iron work in the Botanical Gardens:

with a strange statue in front: why is he wearing a helmet, and nothing else?

The butterfly gardens (complete with many butterflies);

Plants being moved for winter safety into a greenhouse;

a tree with five huge Harris Hawks in it - they are the only hawks who move around in groups - family units of up to seven - to help hunting;

and trees.

Pretty exhausted, and I wasn't going to do much exploration when it came to finding somewhere to eat this evening, so I was very pleased that Santa Evita, a restaurant celebrating Eve Perón, is just down the street ... (polenta and an arugula salad was just what I wanted!).

 

 

the geometry of Miami

Every time I fly to Florida, there are always the most dramatic skies ... I am not staying here (I hope! my onward flight is delayed ...) ... just passing through ... and, yes, still dealing with DGS business.  Just when I thought it was safe to go away, with everything in hand ...

 

hooding

Truly I'll believe that it's the end of the academic year now that we've sent two new PhDs out into the world ... Elissa Watters (with Amy Ogata) and Margot Yale (with Suzanne Hudson).  Happy faces everywhere ...

 

stripes

I was so tired by mid-afternoon (a very patch night's sleep; up at the crack of dawn to go to Keck with Alice as the designated post colonoscopy-and-endoscopy driver; all went well).  These things - let alone the end of the semester - take it out of one.  So I did what I never do, and went to lie down for half an hour - and, well, evidently I was irresistible as a warm soft human surface.

 

other people's front steps

At the bottom of our street, today - but a street about which I felt very sulky, since we were told five days ago (notice tied to gate; notices on lamposts, etc) that it was going to be resurfaced with asphalt slurry, whatever cheap nastiness that might be; that we couldn't park on it, and so on.  Did that happen?  No!  Cancelled due to Unforeseen Circumstances! (a shortage of slurry).  Still, I got in an extra walk.

Yes, there have been a lot of photos of flowers recently.  For those of you skilled in translation - that means it's been Nonstop Admin.  But I have started to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel ...

 

a startlingly pink poppy

Not being the yellow-orange that you'd expect a poppy in these parts to be, this does rather stand out.  For all of that, it proved rather elusive to photograph, despite bringing both a camera and a cell phone to bear on its distinctiveness.  I think that when I threw out handfuls of seeds at the end of last year, some were for "California Wild Flowers," and even if the ones that make it through are habitually the Californian poppies, these are staking a claim to our Los Angeles meadow, too.

 

the matilija

This is just one of the many flowers on the magnificent matilija poppy.  When one looks down on it from upstairs, it's as if someone has been making lots of huge white and yellow paper flowers and tying them to bushes in the garden, very unconvincingly.  I'm hoping that this one - and one of its friends - has definitively taken, because they are finicky plants - native only to a relatively small coastal-ish stretch between San Diego and Santa Barbara, and either dying after a few months, or spreading and spreading - they are rhizomic.  But since not a great deal else (other than regular poppies) truly likes growing on the slope where this is, I'm wishing a long and fruitful family life for it.