Category: Uncategorized

I love all the spring flowers – whether they pop up on their own or are planted. I don’t care – they all work for me.

Walking to the farmers market, I see this lovely flower. I don’t remember it’s name, I know I may have it in my own garden.

At the market! I’ve never seen such a huge protea. Incredible. You know what else was incredible – the place was packed. And I live in a very blue area – but there were hardly any masks! 3 older white women – so I’m going to pretend that they have compromised immunity. Although in reality – they simply don’t ever hear real news – like masks don’t work and also, CA decided that from APR 3, no mask, not on public transportation, not in prisons and not in medical facilities – unless you are the Dr. or nurse. Oh, there was a 4th mask – a Metro employee – she hadn’t heard the news either.

I think this flower is called Banksia- a few buckets full.

A few blocks away – on the median between the sidewalk and the street – this is what I see. Ah California – you never cease to amaze.

I’m a little scared to buy these mushrooms, not to mention the price which is scary enough. I’m sure they are fine, but boy are some of them weird.

Easter is over, not only has the poor Dino fallen, but maybe it’s time to put him away. I am very curious if this house will put up decorations for Independence Day – or is that a bridge too far? (they have a sign for our awful city councilman, I mean woman, did I mention my neighborhood is deep blue?)

At Goodwill the other day, I bought these two small vases. Most of mine had come with floral arrangements and were just to big. I got rid of some of the big ones – I’m trying to minimize some stuff – not my creative supplies of course.

For the Afikoman all the kids got a gift? What to give Aytan??? Always a problem. So I got him some bright red Muy Thai shorts. At the time he didn’t even open the package. So Thursday, the day he goes boxing, Erez pulled them out and look at Aytan’s face – he is very happy! Here he is in action!

Becky and Shira went down to San Diego to see the audiologist, Shira is doing very well! Of course they stopped off at Disneyland on the way home.

Leah

We started out with a drive up the Angeles Crest Highway – way up into the San Gabriel mountains. It was cold, a foggy, most of the drive was in a cloud. Which can be beautiful, but also very slow going. So instead of going all the way to Wrightwood (not sure we could have, the road may still be closed). We took the back road down to Palmdale.

I think this is from the Sand fire in 2016, the burnt remnants of many trees. With the rain we’ve had, new growth will occur- of course it will take a long time for such trees to regrow – but nature has a lot of time.

Water, running in all the canyons! Look at that gorgeous yellow green! Love it.

So we were near Palmdale, why not continue to Lancaster and visit the poppies again. I am following the FB group – CA flower tipline. A number of people said, that all around the reserve there are gorgeous flowers.

There certainly are! We drove down Ave. G and even experience the Musical Road. It is a very short stretch where grooves in the road produce music when driving over them at 55 mph. It works, it really works. Go check out the link, there is the original advertisement from Honda.

Initially we stopped along 110 st, no one around us, although we had seen other cars along the way. And yes, carpets of orange, with purple, and yellow. It was a windy and rather overcast day. so the poppies were in different stages of either open or closed.

My camera is great for video, but I’ve never used it as such – so back to the phone it was, you can hear the wind, you can see the masses of flowers.

Here is my artsy shot, the car, the flowers, the field of solar energy panels – the bird flying and not getting fried by said panels.

I will never share these images on social media. The Nanny Karens will come out screaming about how we are destroying nature! Neither of us were on the flowers, there is plenty of space between the plants. Also, those same Karens are nasty elitists – they want the beauty for themselves – they don’t wan the unwashed masses to come out and enjoy nature. What they don’t understand, is that if the unwashed masses never show up – they won’t care and they’ll be happy to pave this all over. I’m sure by now you’ve figured out – my patience for the ‘do-gooders’ of the world ended a long time a go.

On to another area that did have plenty of people. there were strips of cultivated land interspersed with wildflowers.

Like us, these people weren’t sampling the flowers, they were standing between them. Also, lets say a few get trampled – I doubt the Karens complain when wild animals come by and do the same- that is ok – because they are part of nature – unlike us who for some reason are aliens on this planet. I’ll quote a Jewish saying: עבורי נברא העולם -For me the world was created. Yup, without humans – it’s all pointless – sure we should be good stewards of the earth, but we must enjoy it, and at times that means taming nature. At other times it means working within it, but not pretending it is some special God available only to Karens.

So share I will, I can’t get enough of this beauty.

Or this!

At the busy spot there were some people selling honey. Of course I bought some. He had Lavender, CA poppy, avocado and wildflower. I bought the Lavender, it has a slight scent and taste of lavender! Incredible. It is raw, not cooked in any way and it is amazing!

Then we drove the back roads, by Elizabeth lake and Lake Hughes. We wanted to go through Caustic, but the road was closed, so back down San Francisquito Canyon we went. Had coffee in Valencia and then home. 140 miles in 4 hours of absolute fun and enjoyment. Yes, I love CA- we have a gazillion problems but we also have a lot of wonderful things to be grateful for. I hate the politicians and bureaucrats – but I try to minimize as much as I can their reach into my life.

Leah

It has been a while, what with all the rain for a nice Sunday hike. We decided to honor our son and son in law and hike up to the tree where they got engaged 10 years ago!!

We drove to the top of Kenter Ave and started walking. This is the superbloom in the hills above Brentwood. No poppies at all, but greener than usual, and yellow flowers.

These might not be wildflowers, but escaped flowers from peoples gardens.

Either way, they are very pretty. I don’t get the purity of the ‘native’ which was probably just a plant that arrived earlier than others. Have invasive plants caused damage? Sure, just look at the Kudzu in the south. But the purity cult – not a good thing.

Lovely fuchsia type plant.

I mentioned houses, looking down towards the top of Mandeville canyon. Now that is some house! A guy on the trail knows the owner – he almost got married there. The house itself wasn’t so impressive he said, but the guy owns 60 acres and built himself a lake. We also passed a house that had it’s own small golf course – Los Angeles – the city of extreme contrasts.

A dog walker with 9 dogs! All leashes are around his waist. He is cleaning up after one of them. They are so well trained, it was a sight to see.

Here is the famous tree. When Yish and Yoch got engaged, there was only the swing, since then someone added a bench.

Of course we took pictures!

This was also one of the first warm days we have had in a long time!

Yes, it was overcast and hazy. I wonder if we will get the Junes out of the way early this year.

Leah

In downtown LA there is a bookstore called the Last Bookstore. When I first saw posts about the one in Montrose, I thought it was a branch of that store. Nope, this is the Lost, not the last.

On a lovely Spring day I went up there to see.

This is what is out on the sidewalk. I assume that the books and plants come inside every evening. Especially this year, with all the rain.

It is not a huge store, so there is this lovely seeing area at the front. There are plenty of seating areas. I was there about half an hour after opening so no one was actually sitting anywhere.

Then I went on to the entrance – I’m pretty sure these are all live plants. It gets hot and dry here in the summer, do they have someone to just water the plants?

Once inside, there are all these shelves, all at one angle or another. This is both a used bookstore as well as some newer books. Notice, most of the ceiling is green as well. Not something that needs to be watered, but green.

My book club just read this book. Such a small world. Joel sold some insurance policies to the two daughters of Mona Golabek. There is a version that is more appropriate for young children. I do have to say, this is a good book. Another member of our congregation was on one of those same trains from Vienna to London during the Kindertransport. One thing I realized is that, in hindsight their lives were saved. But they lived through the blitz in London, they lost contact with their parents and in most cases – never saw their parents again. In some cases siblings were reunited.

More seating and books.

Records, the old fashioned vinyl kind. I think they rely on donations for both records and books.

In the flower section I found some of the craft books. Not a lot, there were a few quilting books as well.

I wondered if this is a permanent sculpture, like is it glued together? I checked it isn’t. But something I just noticed now, the bottom book is in Yiddish. I do not know what it is about. I can read it, because it uses the Hebrew alphabet, but I don’t know enough Yiddish to understand the words.

There is an in store aviary – not large, but the birds do make noise.

As well as a saltwater fish tank, with quite a few fish and coral and rocks.

More seating, this couch looks quite comfortable.

At the back, an area that might be a coffee area.

The back, which is probably the lobby of the building. All in all, a wonderful place. So many shops along Honolulu Ave have changed hands – the old businesses closed during the lockdown. It is very nice to see something like this. A bookstore is always a good thing.

Leah

Not a lot of pictures, cuz once people show up, I don’t really take pictures.

The table is all set.

The turkey is roasted.

some of the sides, stuffing made out of matzoh, spring potatoes. There was also asparagus and roasted carrots. I don’t do soup – too much work and it’s not like there isn’t enough food.

Hors d’oeuvres for while we read. Veggies, a fabulous chopped liver (I think I caramelized 3 onions.) Oh, and gefilte fish – I must remember to cut that out, no one eats the fish – its’ awful. I’m not giving up on the chopped liver – but no more gefilte fish.

This just looks like our huge ficus – full of green spring leaves.

Look closely, there is Westley way up near the top.

Family photo, Yoch took the picture, so he’s not in it, my eyes are closed and if you look closely – Cam is making a very silly face.

Then we read the Haggadah, well small parts of it and ate delicious food.

Earlier in the day I took a walk, just to get out.

For two weeks, the ice plant is in full bloom

Saw this succulent in someones front yard. I gave one to Yoch 4 years ago, and it too is thriving and about to bloom.

Then for lunch today – leftovers.

sitting outside, enjoying the glorious weather. matzoh with chopped liver. The problem with Jewish food is that is it brown and boring – but oh my is this tasty.

Leah

This is a good year to go see poppies. I had never gone to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve – so it was time. With all the rain – there will be poppies. It has been cold, so it’s taken longer for them to bloom – but they are doing their duty!

Thankfully the gps took us the back route up through San Francisquito Canyon. I was trying to stop and see the remains of the famous dam. Here is the old road, and if you look carefully, plenty of water.

A closer view, a lot of water running there. We drove a little further, parked and started walking.

Didn’t get very far, the road became a river, at some point that water went off the road and under as we saw in the first picture. The canyon itself is beautiful, so green.

Out of the canyon, at Lake Elizabeth. Two years ago we came out here and the lake was just a dry bed. No more, all the rain filled it and every other old reservoir with water.

We have a need for order. We would like it to rain every year on time. But God and nature don’t work that way. As I’ve mentioned before, nature will balance itself – but it can take years to do so. This was the year to drench CA and in doing so, replenish the aquifers. even my friend in AZ sent me pictures of green hills there.

Just a hillside. Its’ not one of those calendar pictures, and this is where seeing is better than photography, there were plenty of poppies, but my camera just couldn’t capture it. Or maybe it did, you will see my ‘calendar pictures’ and you will see that being is so much better than just a mere second photo.

It was a Friday morning, plenty of people coming out, but the parking lot isn’t that large. also, they only really get a lot of visitors for maybe 6 weeks. One of my first pictures in the reserve. Plenty of other flowers, not just poppies, old growth from last year (the silver plumes) as well as a lot of grey and green in between.

This is more like it! If you go, be prepared to walk, we walked 3.5 miles with a fair amount of up and down hill. This is how I was able to capture some of the best pictures. And yet, the whole experience was so worth it, of course I’m glad I took pictures, but the experience of being there was so much more than that.

I have to be snarky! I’m sure this couple is from West LA, outdoors, not I close proximity relatively young and they are masked. I know, they will never take it off. Sad. What is even sadder to me. There was a group from a special needs program – glad they brought them to see the poppies – but they too were masked. When I walk around Lake Balboa there is usually a group of special needs people – all masked – that is a travesty. Sure – it’s easier to control them, but to my mind – it’s a sin and I hope God will punish these stupid decision makers one one these days. More than anything people with special needs need to breath fresh air as well as see one another faces. But – easier to control when they are masked.

We need a close up of the poppy. The Latin name is: Eschscholzia Californica. Named by a visiting Russian on a scientific expedition. They are the ones to give the Latin names, he named it in honor of the ship surgeon – Dr. Johann Eschscholtz. Of course it has many other names that your average person gave it.

Copa de Oro – cup of gold. Dormidera – for sleepy one, since the flowers close at night or when windy. So grateful that we had a still sunny day.

Plenty of other flowers around, like the Pygmy leaved Lupine. After visiting New Zealand I have a special love for lupines. I guess I need to go to Texas this time of year as well.

Lets’ take the long view, out towards the mountains, that still have snow. Plenty of yellow flowers as well. I’ll stop here and continue in the next post.

Leah

Artistic styling of the quilt.

For the binding, I used the same fabric as the corners. I had originally bought that fabric to possibly make a dress – oh well. I’ll have to go shopping again. I did buy a companion fabric – which will probably become a skirt. I’m in need of new skirts

With my lovely totem. At this point I am now using this quilt in the evenings on my easy chair. The basket quilt is in hiatus. And what next for quilting you ask. I have an unfinished project, that will be made smaller than I originally planned, but I’d like to finish it. More details soon

Second finish, a final finish of this cross-stitch. Now you may say, it lacks a frame. Very true, it probably would look better with a frame, but even if I laced it myself and brought it in for a glassless frame – it would cost a fortune, so I’m getting creative with my works.

first I found this at Best Buy, it’s 16×16, which would work, because my finished work is 14×14, (or so I thought), and inch on each side would be good. Yes, this is very bright and textured, I will be mounting the work on a board, then I’d have to figure out the sides.

Here it is all laced up. Instead of buying an acid free presentation board, I bought and acid free drawing board. It is much thinner, I then cut a piece of batting, just to give the work a little bit of loft.

At Hobby Lobby, where I found the board as well as most of the DMC thread I need for a new project, I found this. Same size, twice the price (still reasonable) but there is no raised paint, and the color is very neutral. So now I have an extra 16×16 ‘artwork’ that either I’ll figure out how to use – or I’ll donate.

I mentioned 14×14, I was wrong, yes, it is the same number of squares both across and up and down. But I only measured across. I forgot that linen is never perfect, so, it was 14.5×14. Oops. No worries, no one will see. I’ve framed other pieces to fit a frame and the borders are not exactly the same on every side. One problem with a thin board, is that its’ not easy to pin down, so I marked the edges and as I laced, I kept on checking.

When it all looked right, I slathered the frame and the piece with fabric glue. Made sure it was lined up correctly and then piled on my fashion and mythology books. Let it all sit for a few hours.

This is what it looks like. Fine, but I wanted a more finished edge, so I glued a thin ribbon.

Here it is, unnoticeable from the front, does give a nice finish on the side. I guess I could have used something like small pompom ribbon, but that doesn’t feel right, I will look into other ribbons that might have another kind of edge for when I do this again. Yes, I will do this again, as well as use old frames. Who knows, maybe I’ll even pay for a frame – although it will probably be one I order special size and do the framing myself.

Two angles on the wall, yes, its’ the same wall, do you see how cameras distort color. Cameras distort a lot of things. the bottom is the more accurate color.

And that is that, I have some smalls to work on and a very very large project. I won’t be monogamous with the large one – that is where the smalls come in.

Leah

Driving down an average street in Burbank, I saw some interesting houses, had to stop to take pictures.

Most of the houses are a variation on this, a small midcentury ranch. Not ‘high’ mid-century – just the kind of houses being build in the post war years.

I drove by, did a double take. parked the car, got out to take pictures. This looks like a storybook house, something that was popular in the 30s’, long before this neighborhood was built. It has wonderful elements of river rock, an undulating fence.

It also has a bay window, which isn’t common in storybook houses, the roof is clearly new – but then many us have to replace roofs from time to time.

Side view. I’m thinking that someone took the original house and updated backwards. Kudos to them. Yes, it’s messy but so be it. T my mind it doesn’t have to be ‘original’ to be a storybook house.

I should have kept walking, but I got into my car again, drove 3 houses and had to stop again.

This owner either updated the original or build new, in the style of Mid Century. I like it! So many areas are losing the old house to McMansions, its’ happening on my street. And yet, someone will always create that unusual house. My next door neighbor has a crew working extremely hard on renovating his house, it is looking very nice!

The wisteria is blooming, this is a very healthy specimen.

My succulents are blooming. Last year the other one had a very similar flower in orange. This one is yellow.

Speaking of yellow

How perfect is this?

Then there is this little guy!

Speaking of little guys.

Einav and Eyal came with their dads to our synagogue – Einav made a friend!

Eyal and I took out the scooter. Their street is a dead end, but one has to be very careful, cars do come by.

After two weeks of rain, Aytan got to go back and feed the chickens and hang with his best friend Burt.

Back at our congregation, me reading the prayer for the state of Israel – in perfect Israeli Hebrew. Yes, I brought up a sidekick. And yes, Israel is in real need of prayers now. The effects of long term lock down leads to long term protests and anger – not at the lockdown, but clearly to my mind this is an affect. We are seeing all kinds of violent ugly protests around the world, each has their own reason, but they are beyond anything we’ve seen before. Except for BLM and Antifa – that always got a pass to be extremely violent.

Leah

Progress is being made. I really like the center, both circular and some straight edge with a ruler.

No real plan, just quilt as I go.

The flowers now have a center with stamens and petals.

The buds are quilted like unopened roses.

Trying to soften the harshness of the leaves as well.

another flower.

So here is the quilting, I’m pleased how it came out. I do enjoy custom quilting with relationship to the quilt itself. Not just edge to edge.

Quilt with owls. I still need to put on the binding, all the quilting is done.

Just from another angle.

I had two leftovers of the larger flowers, Can’t waste anything, so on the back they went. I also need a label, will do that soon.

Leah

Yes, I am a wimp, I don’t want to walk in the rain, I am so over this rain. Of course I’m praying that some of it is still going into our underground aquifers, since too much is going straight to the ocean. So I’m inside, alot.

Which means I’ve passed the halfway point on this owl. Also, I’ve chosen different colors and where the pattern had light colors, I have dark ones. I doubt the owl cares, he still looks quite owlish to me. there are plenty of motifs behind him, I’m not going to include them all. A little less busy.

I ordered wool batting from Amazon, I made a big mistake. I wanted to save money – that means I got some batting from China and it is very bad quality. Why do I do this????

That big empty center needs something that will stand out. So, feathered circles it is.

Lovely! I traced the top of a small table in order to get the largest circle, then found other smaller circles, like an embroidery hoop to create the medium one. Then it was free form feathers. Although, I am thinking that I will use some roller work to contrast the circle with straight lines.

The flowers? Since they are all straight line, I will probably free-form quilt to make them more organic looking. I’ve said this many times, the quilting is a whole other dimension and layer on the quilt.

I know, pictures of an empty house. It wasn’t empty for long, we had 25 people from our synagogue over for a wonderful potluck evening. We have met incredible people – we truly love each others company.

My neighbor across the streets has been a widow for years. She used to work full time but the lockdowns put an end to that. We would talk from time to time, being Jewish – I invited her to come to our Saturday services. She now comes weekly and has been making new friends. I know believe that at any age -if you put in the effort – you can and should make friends. of course she came over and was delighted. Because so many of us say hello, or sit at the same table for lunch – but don’t have the chance to really get to know people -and at this gathering, we most certainly did.

All the tables were full, it was cold and rainy outside, so even though we had set up the outside table and opened the umbrella – it was too cold for that. I do need to invest in one of those outdoor heaters! Once people arrived, I put down my phone and didn’t take a single picture. I did bring out Scotch and many people enjoyed a shot. One of our members brings Scotch every Saturday – we call him The Cup Bearer – and he fulfilled that job admirably here as well.

Leah