Travel Log (Patreon)

The striking plant life has always been one of my favorite parts of visiting California. 

I moved to a little spot in Venice beach in 2011 and it was a bright turquoise blue building with bougainvilleas growing all over outside the windows. They are pink beyond hot pink, impossible levels hotter. 

I’ve never seen those in Texas.

That became my new favorite color for a while because it’s instant energy that fills you up just looking at the flowers in the sun. 

It was a funky building with a rattly wavy aluminum sliding gate that opened on just a few precious parking spaces. There were two spots for three apartments so I think we just had to work it out. Or maybe we could squeeze three in if we were crafty about it. 

The same aluminum material was used for wall paper inside the apartment for a kind of industrial mixed media vibe. There was a trap door out to the roof where you could climb and see the ocean. (If you really got up on your tippy toes!)

I played a YouTube video there, a duo of On the Beach with my fiddle friend Corinne, so you might have seen that. 

One day I was unloading some groceries and I ran into someone my age trying to load a large dress form mannequin type thing into the car.

That’s how I met my neighbor Cindy and we became instant friends as creative nerds making our way out there in the far west haha. Our two apartment doors were the only ones upstairs that used the stair well to the front door of the building so we would sometimes drink tea on that landing between our two places just looking down the stairs, almost like we had a sense of pride of that small piece of shared private real estate haha. 

This trip is to hang with Cindy as we haven’t seen each other much at all in recent years. Osbo is staying home with Grandma! 

Cindy has quite the green thumb, and is keeping my bougainville bonsai tree happy in Pasadena on some garden grounds she is renovating. The pink one is mine and I hope to one day bring it back to TX, while the other two are there to stay.

If you’ve been here on Patreon a while you may remember me picking those up from the bonsai master. 

I got to clip a fresh bouquet from the garden and saw a couple more plants I’ve never seen before, fried egg poppies and finger limes, which I got to taste as well!!! 

(Tasted the finger limes, not the poppies, although as you can see they look almost good enough to eat!)

Then off to the desert we go in search of the famed sound bath destination, Integratron!