It’s Not ‘Caving’ When You Never Were Sound

California Plein Air

There’s no hiking allowed, of course, but a trip to the drug store in Sun Valley meant a chance to stop at the pull-outs for some spring shots of the canyons through the car window. The luchtschap in Southern California this week had to be seen to be believed, and once believed, and nicely cropped, it had to be shared with You.

So Kiddie-winkies, Hop on the .10-cent Trolley Tour, All Free Today (a ten-dollar value!) View Local Canyons, La Tuna and Big Tujunga, In Their Rapturous Vernal Beauty. Your driver is masked, and gagged, so he won’t bore you with any speeches about Uplift! or Fremont cottonwoods or the Floods, or the Verdugo family.

Just hark to the tinkle of the creek. Take a deep breath of the spicy sagebrush air, freshly rain-washed. Go ahead, the squirrels haven’t got the virus yet. (Those rubes never will!)

Marvel at the changing light on the chaparral and the Oz-like hills. The CFP is frisky — it hasn’t had this much clean rain, and clean air, since the railroads came in. That would be the SPRR, in 1876. (Can it Professor, just drive! DRIVE!)

Ito’s Screen Test — Preliminary Stills — “Magic Time Key Light”

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A Natural, but raw as a bone picked from a Van Nuys loading dock. Can the cat MOVE, man? Can he keep in frame? Can he paw his mark? Does his fur SHINE? Can this “Ito” catch the Light?

Patient Reader, Vote! Do we send this Cat back to Bessemer Alley? Or does he go into competition with Norah next week?

Look For The Silver Lupines

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“…whenever clouds appear in the blue.”

You know I’ve been looking forward to documenting the rejuvenation of the CFP in this area. Well, for a coronavirus cheer-up, today I walked, masked as a desperado, over to the Wash to check on God’s Little Scrub-Patch.

Reveling in the aroma of wet sage and deerweed, sweetened with chaparral honeysuckle, I looked forward to seeing how fat and purple the lupines had gotten after yet another few days of late rain. Remember these lovely plants from the last few weeks? Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore?

Well, here’s what I found in the lupine meadow.

The Flying Monkeys came and mowed it to hell. WORSE: I think I was the reason! Last time I was there I pulled some invasive grass. I think somebody noticed and said “look, it’s clear that grass needs cutting, take it out!” And some city crew saw the order and…. “mowed the grass.”