Across the Pond

Showing off in pinks: magnolia tree at the Huntington Gardens Roses, camellias, cacti; sages, jacarandas, and palm trees: last week a friend invited me to spend an afternoon at the  Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens  in San Marino, an affluent suburb of L.A. The Huntington boasts more than 14,000 varieties of plants in 14 principal garden areas and one section or another is always at its best. Right now the magnolias and parts of the cactus garden are showing off in oranges, reds and pinks. Natural habitat, home base: cactus garden As my companion and I were wandering down through the desert garden, into the Australian garden, and, later, through the Chinese garden it struck me how the Huntington is a mirror for life in Los Angeles. Botanical sections adjoin and sometimes blend into each other the way neighborhoods in L.A. do. To the immigrant from Europe some parts of the Huntington such as the Asian areas and the jungle see...

White on white, hard to capture: iceberg roses Mid January, and we just cut the last roses: Icebergs, a burst of fullness but serene and still, white on white, hard to capture in a photograph. Years ago, when I was in high school in Innsbruck, my good friend L. used to give me the last roses from her mother's garden. It was an annual ritual I looked forward to, always reserved for the end of October. Unlike mine, L.'s roses came in colors - red, yellow, a washed out orange. Their stems were  often scraggly, the leaves a little smaller than they might have been two months before, at the height of summer. The memory of the recurring gift includes that of the giver: L.'s green eyes, quick and sharp, the big yet humble smile as she passes the bouquet, three or four flowers, thorny, wrapped in aluminum foil and a damp paper towel. L. was the smartest in our class, an honor student through all grades. After graduation she enrolled in vocational school, to be trained as...

What do we know about simplicity? Figs from our tree. Figs. The taste of summer, the taste of home; my immigrant home. Our backyard tree is heavy with fruit. In the mornings I go out to pick what is ripe; figs for breakfast, a treat straight from the tree; flesh and seeds, refreshing and sweet, grainy resistance and softness at the same time. Figs, the color of their skin, purple with blotches of green or white stripes where they have cracked. The reds and browns inside bring up memories: a summer spent in Normandy, France, with my parents, my brother, and my maternal grandmother. Life was about food in its basic, original form, about mussels and figs and cheese; it was about the ocean and its tides, gigantic but predictable, and about history. We visited Bayeux to see  the tapestry which tells the story of William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings;  we spent a day or a half at  Arromanches,  saw a documentary on D-Day and the landing ...

Purple canopy: Jacarandas on Del Mar Blvd. in Pasadena Trees. Again.  May in L.A. was cooler than usual and June is no different. Anything that flowers is doing so long and abundantly this year, including the Jacaranda trees with their purple canopies. Jacarandas have become popular in the California Southland but they originally came from Central and South America and from the West Indies. The Wikipedia entry on Jacarandas mentions (but does not cite) a legend from Pretoria, South Africa, which is known as Jacaranda City: the time of year the tree blooms coincides with the year-end exams at the University of Pretoria. Should a flower from the Jacaranda tree drop on your head, you will pass all your exams. Nice. If your headed for a test: go find a Jacaranda!

Finally. California's new governor, Jerry Brown, was expected to proclaim today that the drought which has officially plagued the Golden State since 2009 is over. This winter brought precipitation by the tub full: record breaking rain fall in December, plenty more rain in March, 50 feet of snow in parts of the High Sierra. Bottom line we got about 50 percent more precipitation than in an average year. Looking out a restaurant window in Mammoth on March 18 This is great news of course - though we in L.A. should never see ourselves as off the hook. Southern California is a desert. The water that we use here always comes from somewhere else, be it the Colorado River or the High Sierra, and if the drought had an up-side it was that many of us became aware of this. Angelenos aren't - and probably never will be - saints when it comes to environmentalism but as I have said before, we try and there is one L.A. characteristic that works in our favor whenever change is needed: we...

They say there are no seasons in L.A... (See my earlier post Fall in December  for more on this.) Well, it's spring. The orange tree in our back yard is showing off blossoms and fruit at the same time, and nights are filled with the heavy, sweet fragrance of citrus trees. The other day I found some snowdrops in our front yard. Bright green and robust they have popped up out of nowhere, made their way through a thick layer of mulch. One of the previous house owners must have planted them years ago.

Sunday, while Hollywood was getting ready for its big night, with Oscars, red carpet, and gowns, we travelled to the mountains to enjoy the snow. We loaded the skis onto the Jeep and headed for our favorite local ski resort, Mount Baldy. Here's what we found: I am sometimes reluctant to make the journey to Mount Baldy. Not that it's a long one by L.A. standards (45 minutes from our home to the parking lot) but - when it comes to skiing I am spoiled because I grew up on a mountain. Anyway, the view from the top is reward enough: the Mojave desert to the north, the Pacific to the south, and a checkerboard called Los Angeles county in between. Mount Baldy is one of those L.A. excursions that make me wonder how one place can have it all: the desert, the beaches, the mountains; surfing, skiing, hiking... Is it a surprise that the movie industry should have settled here? Images from top to bottom: palm trees against the San Gabriel Mountains ;  Lord's Candle, ...

They say there are no seasons in L.A.... Here are two pictures I took as the sun was setting yesterday. (The forecast for Vienna says snow.)   Images: Early December views of the San Gabriel Mountains and of our neighbor's backyard trees

By Lorraine Seal Lorraine Seal is a fellow expat blogger who moved from Los Angeles to Ireland and on to Salzburg, Austria. Her blog, A Spy in Another Country, is about "the European gestalt as experienced by an American woman married to an Irish man". Across the Pond asked Lorraine for a guest post on the things she misses about Southern California. Dear Christina, As I write this, it’s been three years to the day I departed Los Angeles for life in Europe. This morning, I think of you and your family in Southern California, beginning a new phase of your lives. You asked me what I miss, and I had to think a bit before I could answer. In the time I’ve been here, I’ve made a point of remaining focused on living where I am rather than looking back. Our intention is to stay in Europe, so I’ve tried to avoid comparisons or to consider what I miss. But since you ask, yes, there are sights and tastes and sensations that stand out vividly as I let m...