A walk in fresh spring air is about all we have left; they can’t take that away from me. LA is under “Safer At Home” regulations, which allow for such indulgences. I am sincerely sorry for jurisdictions under “Stay At Home.” I know that Los Angeles is a very different urban environment from New York; in fact it is the major theme of my blog. But I Heart New York as much as anyone, and my heart is heavy for the burden she’s bearing. I can’t even imagine the cooped-up feeling.

Click below for an article on how actually healthy a walk to the park is.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/20/coronavirus-anxiety-nature

Tujunga Wash. At the edge of Valley Village, the Wash is at about the limit of how far the View scans afoot. But once there, one finds a virtual petting zoo of coastal sage scrub and chaparral habitats. Perfectly socially distant, one can spend an hour going just a few hundred aromatic yards, with discoveries and prodigies enough to thrill the amateur natural historian.

This place has showed me what a li’l ol rain can do to all that depressing scorched hardpack that for twenty years I knew as California. Scrub teaches the lesson of resilience. 3/4 of what was planted by the greenway project, died a scorching death in eight years of drought and zero maintenance. On the surface it looked scraggy and brown and forlorn, and became a hobo jungle. Then about four years ago, normal rainy seasons started returning, and the greenway soil started doing its thing. One year ago, maintenance returned, the vandalism stopped, and it all got a long-overdue raking on account of the risk of fire. Now it’s looking fine. This is a very young biome in the act of re-discovering, nurturing and fertilizing its own terrain.

For contrast, here is a picture of the channel just south of the greenway. This is what the whole of the Wash used to look like, as left by the Army Corps of Engineers. Gad.

The best show is being put on by the deerweed, Light and delicate, tipped with flame, they nestle in the aegis of other plants, buckwheat or white sage, each sending up stems between the stems of its neighbors. Everybody gets a chance at sunlight, and wind support, while the ground underneath remains thickly shaded and cool, encouraging quail and rodents and lizards and ants. This symbiotic interweaving of the evolving canopy is one of the characteristics of scrub; and deerweed is one of the most reliable pioneers for reclaimed land. Bless it, it is a nitrogen-fixer.

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Look at the massive spikes the kasili (white sage) is sending up! Watch this space for the lavender blooms, dilly dilly — then go tell the bees. Salvia apiana.

The bush sunflowers are troopers, really. They try hard, and even when nothing else is showy, you can always get a good “Instagram shot” of your hike with a background of pretty Encilia californica. They are the ubiquitous, mildly annoying “Happy Face” of the CFP. I love them I adore them I am crazy about them. But check out the oaks — these are, I believe, very rare Engelmann oaks. So damned vigorous, flush with spring. If they are Engelmanns, they don’t live any place else but here. Heavens. I am a camera.

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Beautiful buckwheat, just setting out its blossoms. Eriogonum fasciculatum.

I yawned, foolishly thinking that was “it,” and turned for home. then I glanced at a waste spot I hadn’t looked at, and among what I thought were weeds I spotted the (nearly invisible, in the gloom) lupines. Hosanna! But I’ve never seen lupines like these in my life. They’re not arroyo lupines, and they’re not mountain lupines. I think they might be “sky lupines,” or field lupines. Anyway, this was a rare chance to see a signature plant of the California spring, uncluttered by Spanish Pasture Mix, revealing its remarkable branching structure, at which I never guessed. View even its famous poison lupini beans, carried in their own spiky structures high above the scrub. View, and marvel. When I’ve tracked down the taxonomy I’ll tell the bees, who’ll tell you.

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