peacocks in the park

Well, it's been a busy few weeks for us with a guest in town and all other kinds of goings on...I hope you've all been doing well!

Here are a few photos from an outing to the Los Angeles Arboretum and Botanic Garden last weekend. I did take photos of various flora, but I was mostly taken by the many peacocks that were just wandering around the grounds unattended. They made the funniest noises all day long and didn't seem to be afraid of people at all...except once my husband got too close to one when he wasn't paying attention and the peacock turned and fanned all its tail feathers out at him in a big huff. Touchy, touchy!

Please be sure to stop by tomorrow, when author Diana Schoenburn stops by the blog to do a guest post. She'll be talking about her adorable book Puppet Play, which you can preview by clicking on the link.

zoo

The day after Thanksgiving, we wanted to do something outdoorsy after all that food...so we went to the zoo! Apparently this was a popular idea, since we ran into two other parties of people we knew there as well.

It was a really nice day to be out, quite brisk and slightly overcast, and good weather to be walking around in. The animals always see to be more active when the weather is cooler anyway, and we saw lots of playful behavior on display.

Of course, there were also animals that were curled up just trying to stay warm, too. As you may remember, I love koalas, so I was looking forward to seeing them on our outing... and see them we did, although they were all huddled up in balls or clinging to branches by heat lamps. I'm quite fond of the way koala bears fold down their ears when they're sleeping...it's so very sweet and it makes me want to squeeze them with great enthusiasm. It's just as well I'm really not allowed anywhere near them; heaven help the poor bears if I ever get myself over to those places in Australia where you get to hold them.

squirrel

As I was taking photographs outside yesterday of some swap items I'd made, I sat on a ledge in front of our next door neighbor's house. There were all kinds of rustling noises and leaves falling, which I at first assumed were because of the wind blowing everything around. But then there was such a flurry of activity in the branches above me that I finally looked up, and saw this little guy directly overhead.

The squirrel was busily gathering seeds from the big pods in the magnolia tree and eating them, quite noisily and with great gusto. You can see the bit of red in between his paws in that last photo if you click on it, which is quite charming. It would have been a bit more picturesque if he'd had his bushy tail perked up a little more, but I suppose a squirrel's got to balance himself whether he's having his picture taken or not.

la county fair

A few photographs from the first day of our anniversary weekend...a much-anticipated visit to the L.A. County Fair.

We spent several hours looking at horses and chickens and honeybees and goats, as well as wandering around and seeing the sights. My favorite activity was definitely seeing little pigs wearing bandanas race each other around a pen--the announcer told us they were rewarded with milk and Oreos, hee hee.

We also had epic carnival food in the form of funnel cake, lemonade, and a giant smoked turkey leg. I sometimes crave that turkey leg during other seasons when I can't get one, so I always tear into it with great and greedy relish. It's fun to hold a big meaty drumstick and to feel like Henry VIII for awhile.

                  

our cats get more mail

Our fat cat, a handsome old Maine Coon, is the alpha cat in this household. He's the middle child, but he is so sure of himself and his place in the world that it just naturally falls to him to keep order around the place.

Because he's such a capable cat, and because I also wanted to keep our names off junk mail wherever possible, I usually put magazine subscriptions in his name (cheers to you if you can pinpoint the origins of his name, you 80s fiend!), and he also maintains an email account so he can deal with less personal items of business.

The cats do get real mail upon occasion, but both the name and the email address really come in handy for instantly spotting pieces of mail that are solicitations. This weekend our cat received a highly presumptuous but tremendously entertaining letter from AARP, the senior citizen organization which not only enclosed a letter and a bill, but also a plastic membership card with his name printed on it.

Exciting, yes? It was for us, anyway. He doesn't seem to think very much of it.

giant moth

Holy giant moth, Batman! Look who was perched just above our stairwell just now.

PS--and because people have asked: that's a six inch wingspan. He stayed there for a few hours before he left.

paramount ranch

Today we felt like being the great outdoors, so we took ourselves to the Paramount Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains. It was a hot and sunny day, and the trails went along acres and acres of dry grassland filled with hoppy grasshoppers. (After waiting patiently and snapping dozens of shots of grasshoppers in the grass, the one pictured below just decided to hitch a ride on my husband. He seems to attract whatever we're stalking.)

We also spied butterflies and a few birds and lizards, though not too many flowers and such. It was fun to see lots of visitors on horseback, too, although it left some of the paths a little stinky.

The park also has a permanent Western Town, where Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman and Carnivale were filmed, along with many other films and television episodes, including Firefly and The X-Files. Just about all the buildings were boarded up, unfortunately, so there wasn't much to do there...and I left my calico dress at the cleaners.  Overall, this wasn't a very big park (at least this part of it), but still well worth a visit--the paths meander nicely, and I'd love to go back in the spring when it's cooler and more things are in bloom. Being here on a summer's day meant that we heard the pleasant droning of insects in the brush, though, as well as the wind rustling through the dry grass.

Speaking of calico, between the dusty western town and the dry land and the insects, I kept thinking about poor Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family and the grasshopper plague that wiped out their Minnesota wheat crop. All that was missing from our walk today were swarms of giant blackbirds.

british children's book illustrations at huntington

We visited The Huntington Art Collections yesterday to see an exhibit of British children's book illustrators. It was a quite nice, although much smaller than I expected--really just one small room or a large closet, even. The two items in the collection I liked best were the Kate Greenaway and Arthur Rackham illustrations, which are pictured here.

It took us just a few minutes to go through the exhibit, which was a tiny bit disappointing since we'd come a long way and, although we love the Garden, it's a little expensive, and it was a bit too hot to walk around very much. Still, we braved the heat and did wander through the shadier sub-tropical rain forest, the Japanese and Chinese gardens, and the koi ponds again, where I did some more dragonfly-stalking.

Huntington is one of my favorite places to go in Los Angeles, though. The first time we came, we didn't know what to expect and ended up spending more than 5 hours there, and we even had tea in the Rose Garden Tea Room. The many gardens are just beautiful and impeccably kept, including an Australian one, a desert one, and a formal one with statuary. Their art collections includes the Blue Boy and many other beautiful paintings, and the library is well worth a visit with its astounding collection. It's a place that reflects impeccable taste and dollars well-spent, as well as a great place to spend a long afternoon.

baby hummingbird

I've been thinking about hummingbirds a lot recently. A neighbor from our old apartment complex just told us that there is a pair nesting among the bougainvillea, just as they did last year when my husband and I helped our neighbor try to rescue a baby hummingbird that had been abandoned. 

We really weren't sure if we were doing the right thing by intervening, but we thought since he would most certainly die without food, we should at least try to give him a chance. Sadly, after nearly two days of feeding him, we were devastated to find that he had passed.

Tonight I also came across this post from Kristin St.Clair, my favorite crafter over at Martha Stewart'scraft department, who just went through a similar experience. It reminded me again of what a miracle it was to have been so close to this tiny, fragile creature, and to see his beautiful iridescent feathers up close.

We buried him in the garden at the old place, in a shady corner under an Angel's Trumpet tree, using a flat stone for a marker. I still look over to that corner whenever we go visit, and I still think of him now and again, and about his valiant struggle for life. It was unbearably sad to lose him, but I could never regret the brief, intensely sweet experience of knowing him.

norton simon museum & garden

Today we went to the wonderful Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. This private collection, comprised of mostly European paintings and sculptures, was put together by a wealthy philanthropist-businessman who was also married to actress Jennifer Jones.

We were pleasantly surprised by how excellent the permanent collection is, particularly those in the Impressionist gallery. There were many works that were familiar to us, as well as really great pieces we'd never seen before from the likes of Rodin, Degas, Gauguin, Monet, van Gogh, Rembrandt, and many others, along with some more modern artists such as Picasso, Diebenkorn, Kandinsky, and Noguchi.

The museum also has a small but very pretty garden filled with sculptures and, somewhat appropriately, with water lilies, where I spent some time happily stalking dragonflies by the edge of the water. We don't have a super-duper high-powered camera yet and they don't always just fly up to us to visit, so for now I have to rely on stealth and patience and luck to wait for the dragonflies to light on a bit of greenery nearby.

The good thing is, we often do see them when we go to gardens here in southern California. I like these red dragonflies quite a bit--I think they're flame skimmers?--although there's an elusive, light-bodied blue-green one with transparent wings I've never been able to capture on film.