69 years ...

Véronique and I have known each other sixty nine years, more or less.  I won't say that we've been friends all that length of time - lop a few years off - because the first time I met her, her mother (my own mother's best friend from school) thought that I might like to help change her diaper, which three year old me thought was completely gross...

The last time we were in Century City together, however, would have been ... in March 1988, when I was doing some work in UCLA library before giving talks at UC Riverside and Cal Tech.  That was my first trip to LA, and mercifully she baled me out of the horrible hotel I'd landed in on Sepulveda - probably a Day's Inn? I had no money to speak of.  A few hours into my visit, I thought Los Angeles was all oil derricks and pouring rain, which proved to be a misleading impression, in the long run.  But I found a pay phone, and called Véronique, and she swept me off to stay in her apartment in Santa Monica, which was ... a change of scenery, and wonderful.  It still rained, though ... One day, and that was before the Mall was a consumerist dream, she took me to her office which was high up in one of the towers, and I looked down on the hazy city ...that was a long time before I had even the faintest idea we'd both end up in the same place.

 

drive home

I always appreciate this particular row of palm trees interspersed with street lights, the built and the vegetative side by side.  It was a long day: admin, more admin, and some admin.  I'm using the light here - natural and artificial, too - to remind me that there must be some at the end of the tunnel ...

two green bicycles

Definitely a sustainability metaphor here!  Since these were on campus, parked outside the School of Social Work, quite the best thing about them is that they were stationary, and not part of the battery of wheeled objects that hurtle towards one with students on them.  

 

tree shadow

Coming out of Taper Hall this evening, I was stopped by this beautifully framed shadow.  I feel there ought to be a metaphor lurking within this ...

 

the poet's wife

She's starting to wilt, somewhat - who can blame her in this unseasonable heat? - but I picked these two flowers that were drooping over our fence and onto our neighbor's property, and brought them inside where we can enjoy them.  It was a somewhat perilous climb to get them - perilous because a neighboring rose had aggressively sharp thorns.

I wish I could remember more about the little blue and white vase.  It seems to me that I've always known it: it was among a small number that lived in the bottom of the corner cupboard in the dining room - one of the vases that was habitually used for the miniature posies and couple of stems that my mother delighted in.  But where did she get it?  Was it a junkshop find; a gift from her mother, or ...?  Whatever, it's perfectly balanced, and looks perfect with the yellow roses.  

Also, none of the horticultural websites that sing the praises of this David Austin rose seem to worry - unlike me - if she had a name of her own ...

 

the final round of our birthday celebrations

... and yes, it is late February, but it was warm enough to eat outside on Connie's deck, with Lydia, and we feel so wonderfully stuffed (salmon, red cabbage, mashed potato, Erewhon's terrific kale and white bean salad, a Tartine brownie, ice cream) that we may never move, let alone eat, again - or at least, not for another twelve months.  

 

a very large pot with a very small hole

Of course there are some tricks of perspective here - but nonetheless, this is a large pot - maybe the height of my elbow - one of two that had citrus trees in them (one lime, one Meyer lemon).  These fruit trees were doing - well, not brilliantly, but were ok, until our gardener decided that the rosemary and oregano that was also in them needed to come out, since they were sapping energy from around the roots, and the trees needed repotting in special citrus compost.

This didn't work.  Somehow, the pots then didn't drain at all - we think their tiny, inadequate drainage holes must have been flat against the ground, and over time, and some really drenching rains, the water has been an inch or so deep at the top, forming swimming pools for bees.  The trees hated this; their leaves started turning yellow and dropping.  This is not the California dream ... So now the trees are planted in the ground; the pots will be raised off the ground on bricks, and, once the spread-out soil has dried out, planted with bay trees and trailing rosemary.  Keep your green fingers crossed.