Lots of times I’m glad to be living in Southern California where winters are mild and things hardly ever freeze. Today’s one of those amazing winter days: brilliantly sunny, warm–and it’s the middle of February. But there are down-sides. Thousands… Read More »weeds weeds weeds
All gardening is landscape painting.–Alexander Pope Planting ground is painting a landscape with living thing.–Gertrude Jekyll Once properly examined, Jekyll’s comparison looks to be both superficial and exaggerated.–David E. Cooper The Japanese garden designer creates a theater for the wind… Read More »some random quotes
I’ve just finished David E. Cooper’s A Philosophy of Gardens, a short, dense book–though readable as far as philosophy goes. In it he tries to figure out what it is about gardens that make them matter to us. After propping… Read More »a philosphy of gardens
Here’s an image I ran across in the LA Times this morning that I wanted to share: It’s a painting entitled “The Bridge” by Swedish painter Tommy Hilding in his current Urban View show at the Angles Gallery in Santa… Read More »convergences
I’ve been rereading The Poetics of Gardens, a wonderful, witty, thoughtful book by architect Charles Moore, landscape architect William Turnbull and theorist William J. Mitchell. In two places it references Igor Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music, in which Stravinsky argues that… Read More »gardens, phonebooths, poetics and old maids
Here’s a bit of discussion from David E. Cooper’s A Philosophy of Gardens that talks a bit about gardens and nature and those who would have a garden be made of only native plants, a topic I touched on lightly… Read More »"nature" and natives
Sorry. I don’t know the species, but it’s for sure an aloe, possibly Aloe arborescens. It’s pretty common in Southern California but spectacular nevertheless, especially in bloom: This is the plant in the front yard. It’s now mounding something like… Read More »in bloom: this big aloe
[ continued from part 1 ] My second trip to the Mojave Phonebooth was a few years later when I was leading a photography trip for some fellow photography geeks with the local Sierra Club chapter. My trips are often… Read More »the mojave phonebooth: part 2, i told you it was weird
I first ran across what later came to be known as the Mojave Phone Booth in January of 1993 or 4. I’d been camping that weekend in what was soon to become Mojave National Preserve, and one day was exploring… Read More »the mojave phonebooth: part 1, weird at first sight
This one didn’t make it to the papers, but there were a lot of them over the holidays: We were up at John’s aunt’s place in Northridge for the holidays. That area of Los Angeles is in one of the… Read More »a few fewer xmas trees