home garden tomatoes

…gathered from the garden out my kitchen window is one of the things I missed most being away last month, and today a windfall that will be canned after we’ve had our fill of it fresh….making room for tomorrow’s harvest.

garden lunch with dome and view

…brought together various visiting Euro friends and new L.A. friends – the day before I depart for four months mostly away from home – finally making use of the long garden table under the California walnut tree with tree stump seating provided by last year’s dear departed carob tree – dining almost exclusively on today’s garden harvest like baked squash, leeks, and onion with a tomato and basil salad.

sunset fron the dome window

…back after a few months away, happy to home in California which always put those Joni Mitchell words through my mind…Oh California I’m coming home, Oh make me feel good rock ‘n’ roll band, I’m your biggest fan, California I’m coming home…

over the dome

…this evening after 24 hours checking in on the homefront, and now headed ‘back east’ as they refer to it here ‘out west’ to New York City where I’ll be planting a big round wild edible medicinal herbal pollinator attractor garden (with plants and dirt from McEnroe Organic Farm and the amazing Annie Novak of Eagle Street Rooftop Farms & Growing Chefs) in the MOMA sculpture garden tomorrow in preparation for a fall premiere installation of Domestic Integrities.

peas in the podded and shelled

…has been on my mind since I first noticed some of those pods plumping up a few weeks ago, and this afternoon I have the gumption to hunt them all down one by one,  then to a stump in the shade to shell, and finally to the kitchen where they go into the the big red pot with everything else looking good today – like kale, parsley, broccoli…

veg on the roof

…in their crowded bed – lovingly raked, graded, laid out, and sprinkled with compost just this winter – is dusty green, bright green, lettuce green, strawberry green, onion green, pea green, kale green, calendula green, and a little yellow from the small flowers produced by the beautiful bolting broccoli.

geodesic triangle framed pine tree

…out the geodesic dome window from bed this morning is reminding me of Italian days.

Sundown peas on the roof

…yes, yes, yes.

Domestic Integrity Field test in browns and orange

…of old clothes from local friends is a new test at home (in shades of brown and a bit of orange for the brown with orange kitchen) with a new loose knotted technique that makes it super thick and cushy and cozy on bare feet, preparing for the new series of Domestic Integrity Field projects soon hitting the road.

late spring rooftop garden bounty

…while looking back at January 16, March 2, and April 7th updates gives me new appreciation for the speed of dirt to wild native fields and dense veg beds.

cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) drama

…or Cynara cardunculus, are found wildly making their way all over my L.A. hill, and I do my best to encourage their big-leaved purple-thistle-flowered towering drama – and one of these days I have to get around to actually braising those tough stems into something to eat.

Jupiter's Beard on the hill

…or Centranthus ruber, has been creeping around the gardens here for years, looking great and flowering and continually coming back with little encouragement or even a drop of rain through the summer months, and this season it is especially happy – covering the slope at the front steps with it’s happy pink flowers – and after having it around for 12 years, now I find out the leaves and roots are even edible…nice.

today's rooftop garden with wildflowers, succulent rocky slopes, and veggies

…follows on the heels of others from Jan 16 and Mar 2, and today the reports are coming in of wildflower blooms, big fat broccoli heads, more kale than a kale-lover can consume, lines of leafy greens getting harder to keep up with by the day, meager strawberry harvests that allow for little more than a nibble on alternate days, onions that are shooting up, snap peas that are climbing the fence and putting out subtle white flowers, plus ambitious collards, early eggplants, and tangy parsley…

today's lunch produce

…is the pleasure of late winter L.A., enjoyed as four guests are coming over for a midday meal, so today it will be everything veg for a big pot of soup, plus leafy green salad, and the last of the loquats.

decomposed granite terraced slopes

…is the beautifully warm-colored soft-textured stone that comes up with almost every shovel and trowel on my hill, which I covered my roof with as it was coming up from the ground in my early gardening days here – and these days re-working the land I first worked a decade ago, I’m making new terraced areas, digging up even more decomposed granite, covering the terraced slopes with it, and inserting cuttings of my favorite sprawling succulents.

cleaning the old glass ceramics, and bottles

…replaced gardening this morning as I was reconfiguring the back corner of the garden, moving dirt around, re-grading, making a new terraced area on the site of what must have been the former trash incinerator for the big old 1920′s Spanish style house behind me – and what came up with each new shovel of hydrophobic ashen soil were piles and piles of little bottles, each one different than the next, in funny shapes, which I am now collecting, cleaning, and considering what to do with them next – making me wonder what future generations of Sundown Drive residents will make of what I left back there.

the pieces of Jed's sculpture in place

…from London via Human Resources (where the rest of the pieces were ceremoniously trashed and trampled) were placed in their new home today (the long abandoned, recently refurbished redwood dog run enclosure – now outdoor sculpture gallery) with artist friend Jedediah Caesar – who came over to help situate the pieces, which will be installed later in the month, when we will celebrate by planting a tree in it’s hole – hopefully a fig.

collards flanks by broccoli and kale

…in a messy row between the broccoli and the kale are up and ready to eat on the rooftop garden ya’ll.

Oli enjoying half-made Sundown braided rug #2

…is slow and tedious as I make sense of the gathered old grey and green towels and blankets and organize them into a braided spiral pattern – the the real work begins of stitching it all together.

felt rolls, sleep bags, and towels become a thick drab rug

…is the fourth that I have started (but not finished), each for a different floor of the house (and the early beginnings of a new on-going project), this one a bit of a drab downer after the sparkles in the cave and the blues in the dome – a meeting of raggedy forrest green bath towels on their last legs, old felty grey sleeping bags that nobody would ever consider sleeping in, and yet more of that cheap felt first used to trick-out the Animal Estates HQ at SFMOMA in 2008 – but I am shredding the fabric strips for this one in extra wide sizes resulting a very satisfying substantial chunky hefty cushy rug.